Glory to the Heroes Blog
Whatever Happened to the Ghost of Kyiv?
“The ghost of Kyiv is a superhero-legend, whose character was created by Ukrainians!”
~Facebook Page of the Ukrainian Air Force Command 30 April, 2022
With these words, the legend of the Ghost of Kyiv was put to rest. Social media groups and youtube comment sections were full of people sneering with triumph at any online stranger who had dared believe the legend. Even as early as April 2022, I could see the effect of Putin’s propaganda machine at work. There were people out there who didn’t want the Ghost to be true. It was not as if they thought there might be a more logical explanation. They acted as if it were some kind of liberal lie.
Already, there was talk of Ukraine inciting this war. Already, people believed most Ukrainians in the Donbas must be somehow suppressed by nazis. I ran into many of these people as I researched Ukraine and considered the story for my fictionalized account of the Ghost of Kyiv. A great deal of them could have been social media bots or paid trolls, but eventually the revised history of Putin reached a few of my family members through the likes of Tucker Carlson.
The lies ate at them until they believed them. Maybe this war was NATO’s fault. Maybe Putin had a right to be worried about his neighbors. Biden was in charge. It must be his fault. This could lead to nuclear war. Putin was crazy enough to do it. This would have never happened under Trump.
When these discussions too place, I was dismayed. It became clear to me that the myth of the Ghost wasn’t about whether a pilot in an outclassed Mig-29 had managed to shoot down six aircraft, including two highly advanced SU-35s.
The story of the Ghost of Kyiv is actually about whether or not Ukraine could defeat Russia. But the Ghost became a symbol of how to win a propaganda war. There is one fact of humanity a KGB Propaganda expert like Putin will never understand. Legends born of honor are far more powerful than lies born of fear.
The world has at least three real-life Ukrainian ace pilots of the 40th Tactical Aviation Brigade to thank for the legend of the Ghost of Kyiv. Each of them who each were awarded the Order of the Gold Star (Also referred to as the Hero of Ukraine medal). It is the Ukrainian equivalent to the medal of honor. The pilots are Major Stepan Tarabalka, Major Andrii “Juice” Pilshchykov, and Major Vadym “Karaya” Voroshylov. The Ghost of Kyiv is their story. I will be writing a piece on each pilot as a part of a four part series, so make sure you sign up for notifications so you don’t miss anything this week.
(This is Part 1 of 5 Subscribe and Return for The Next Entry Tomorrow, 9 March)
The Hard Truth of Credentials: Why Nobody Wants Conflict Fiction About Ukraine
I have written an anthology of three novellas on the warriors of Ukraine called “Glory to the Heros”. Since I am trying to get this anthology traditionally published, I won’t say much about the process, but I am not afraid to tell people it has failed to go on submission for a year. This is due to the status of the publishing industry and a hands-off approach to politics unless the author has political credentials – which I do not.
Credentials are a funny animal. I could be Neil Degrasse Tyson talking about my specific career field in physics, and there would be people who consider me a fraud. This is especially true if I tell a climate change denier about climate change, or perhaps a flat-earther why the earth isn’t flat. I am an expert. I am part of a huge scientific community of experts. But I am not trusted because tribalism has taught people not to trust me. And yet, negative publicity is still publicity, and Neil Degrasse Tyson has no shortage of listeners to his podcast or buying his books.
Tyson inherited the legacy of Carl Sagan, in a way and I doubt I will have the same mentorship path. And yet, I want to discover the secret to writing about timely events in my own style.
Education (usually a PhD) can bring you some credentials, but to cross the line into someone who can tell stories like I want to tell, it will take something much more. There would be no negative publicity. There would just be people ignoring a book about the important haze of legend uplifting both the horror and the heroism of Ukrainian warriors.
We call the genre “modern conflict fiction”. It uses the model of historical wartime fiction, but for something more recent. How recent can something be conflict fiction rather than historical? This distinction might provide an answer as to why publishing during a conflict might be so difficult. I found a few titles closest to each American War.
World War Two:
There were many propaganda related films during World War Two. And there were many that used the war as a backdrop. Many of them were spy thrillers. Some of them were about lovers on ships struck by U-boats. Many of the films were based on books of the same name, so the mod during world war two – a very unifying positive war after December 7th 1941 – was to tell lots of stories. Some of them were more nonfiction than fiction, but fiction always had its role.
1942 – Pearl harbor was a day that lived in infamy, but most of the American Public did not know a small island in the pacific with American soldiers was also attacked. “Wake Island” is a fictional dramatization of those real events. Propaganda? For sure. Conflict Fiction? Absolutely.
1943 – Guadalcanal Diary – The real first battle took place in August 1942 and war correspondent catalogued the events in a book. By November 1943 Hollywood had made a film dramatizing the diary. Films like this made an attempt to be almost totally nonfiction.
1943 – As a Texas Aggie, I must mention “We’ve Never Been Licked”. This film is famous (or perhaps notorious to Texas Aggies) because it uses Texas A&M University as a setting and features our famous Bonfire as the school is infiltrated by Japanese spies. It is hard to talk about how this type of film contributed to Japanese internment camps.
1945 - “A Walk in the Sun” is a 1945 fictional film based on the real history by the 1944 novel of the same name. The novel was serialized in liberty magazine.
Korean War (1950-1953)
The Korean War is often called the “Forgotten War” – but it was not forgotten by authors and Hollywood at the time. Some examples include:
“Retreat, Hell!” – A fictional 1952 film based on real war events of 1950.
“Korea Patrol” – a 1951 Film depicting a group of American and South Korean soldiers attempting to blow up a bridge. My brief research suggests even the events were fictional.
“Combat Squad” – a 1953 film depicting Korean War Combat.
Unlike WW2 – it does not appear as many films were based on books. This changes in the ten years that follow, in which many first hand accounts were turned into books and then into films. One example of this is the 1957 film “Battle Hymn”. One of the major sad themes about Korean War films is how many of these guys had survived World War 2 just to go fight in another war.
Vietnam War
I do get the impression this war is where things got sticky for the publishing and film industry.
1963 – “A Yank in Vietnam” with the war still new, and US involvement escalated to a full scale operation, a film about a downed pilot being rescued by a female South Vietnam Guerilla and falling in love is released. This shows a still Romanticized version of the war.
1966 – “To the Shores of Hell” – Now the attitude shifts toward rescuing the American POW, a theme which would carry well into the early 1980s. When we think of the trauma of the POW, none is as tragic for America as the many who never came home from this conflict.
1968 – “The Green Berets” is based (very loosely) on a book of the same name written is the same year as the Tet Offensive against the largest cities in South Vietnam (Also 1968). John Wayne was so concerned by the anti-war sentiment in the United States, he wanted to make this film to present the pro-military position. He requested and obtained full military cooperation and materiel from 36th President Lyndon B. Johnson and the United States Department of Defense. How about that for credibility? And then they made a mostly fictional film.
When we reach the modern era of warfare, fictional stories created during the actual war disappear. The first Gulf War is too short to do anything but documentary, and so is the second one. But they do get great fiction like Jarhead and the Hurt Locker. It almost seems like after Vietnam, it was not until about ten years after the conflict that stories and films were published.
My conclusion can only be that Vietnam made the industry afraid to tell fiction during the conflict. But it doesn’t seem to be because of bad sales or lack of available credibility.
And I think its wrong. Sometimes the best time to tell a fictional story is while it is happening, so you further protect the identities of real people involved. Perhaps we are too afraid of not getting the details right or showing bias. However, I can say the Russians are not afraid to tell complete fiction to get what they want, and people believe it. But that is a discussion for another time, and so is the way we give the story telling industry courage to take a stand.
Instead, I would like to focus on primary source books telling the truth. Incidentally, Ukraine did a film about a heroic last stand at an airfield during a cease fire in the same civil war. So, they don’t have a Vietnam to make them nervous about story telling, and they are familiar with near-time dramatization. I will blog about “The Cyborgs” soon. Here is a list of modern Ukrainian authors who need their experiences read. So be sure to check some of them out.
The Fall of Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.
March 4th 2022
On this day in 2022 – The issue was still in doubt for Kyiv and Ukraine. The nation was in the middle of a desperate battle. Atrocities were being committed in places like Bucha, where 458 innocent civilians were massacred by the 234th Air Assault Regiment of Russia. The Putin regime, of course, denies these allegations, but if you are reading this blog and find Putin trustworthy, despite all the photo evidence available, stick around for a few weeks.
In this entry of Glory to the Hero’s the blog, we are going to focus much further south than the towns surrounding Kyiv. We are going to dive into the terrifying moments when the Russians seized the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. The goal is to try to imagine being an ordinary civilian worker at the largest nuclear power plant in Europe when the shelling starts. The plan for this blog is to sometimes write fictional recreations of the small events of the individual heroes. But for now I want to share an actual interview.
When the plant was seized, it was an international incident. The Russians had their side of the story, and the Ukrainians have theirs. If you know what I do for a living, I can tell you I know the Ukrainians tell the truth on this situation, and the Russians do not. I am not a primary source, but I am adjacent to them. I wish I could prove it to you, but as the line from Top Gun goes . . . then I would have to kill you. (Or go to jail).
And yet, we have here an interview with a primary source. I would think Roman German in this interview would be easier to trust for some of you than some guy pretentiously proclaiming e knows things he can’t tell you. This Nuclear Engineer is a hero, who loved his job, but suddenly on 4 March 2022 he was forced to do it at gunpoint. It got worse from there. What strikes me is that this person stayed. He tried to tough it out. He tried to live under occupation. He loved his land and his job that much, but soon he had to think of his family and his very life. His escape could have gone badly. And I salute this hero.
I want you, my reader, to imagine working at a job you love, and suddenly you are forced at gunpoint to keep doing it, without pay . . . and to suffer torture if they don’t think you are doing it correctly. A true devastating loss of freedom isn’t about being forced to wear a mask, a seatbelt, or a helmet. It isn’t even really about the government trying to scare businesses into requiring vaccinations of their workers (an unconstitutional act which was overturned.) And it isn’t really about someone getting fired for refusing to not talk about something on social media. Its about this exact situation.
Think about this next time you see tyranny – yes, even in Trump. But also think about where Trump has placed his allegiances.
https://www.npr.org/2023/06/04/1180030838/ukraine-s-nuclear-workers
Common Senses
I like to write poetry from time to time. And I thought I would share some of it here. I think this Blog is going to become primarily my thoughts on the Ukraine conflict, since I have an an anthology of Novellas I am trying to sell to the publishing world concerning that topic. For now, I leave you with this poem called “Common Senses”. Thank you for stopping by and please feel free to comment.
Life doesn’t make much sense
Unless you are swinging for the fences
In a game with no rules
And a dream perfect for a fool
The journey will require all your senses,
Make way though the jungle at its densest
Cross the threshold of the mind
And into the eternal spirit you must find
The showdown of memory locked into a scent
Enveloped in the perfume of all your loves and what they meant
The peppermint evergreen of holiday cheer
Or the honey baked ham to celebrate the new year
Keep an eye on the prize and never lose sight
Of the courage it takes to do what is right
Rage against the blindfold of the ego
And learn to spot the white rabbit hidden in the snow
Don’t always listen to what makes cents,
Perk up your ears for the unspoken comments
Where the sound of silence speaks to the soul
And in stillness the heart of the wild reveals the goal
The taste of victory is neither bitter nor sufficient,
When a lack of nutrition weighs on the moment
Devour every morsel of knowledge to build wisdom,
But chew slow as to not choke on the too much skepticism
Reach for the clouds and unlock their secrets,
Where dreams condense into the elixir of the quest
Feel the difference between tears and the rain,
And rise with bliss in a final triumph over pain.
The meaning of it all lies beyond the common senses,
Often in short supply but we still take our chances
As the sojourner listens for the feeling written in the cosmic music,
To taste love, inhale fresh hope, and be a witness to faith
The Lesser Evil
It is an illusion that there are "sides" dividing the nation. This illusion is perpetuated by an alliance of con artists. This alliance includes billionaires who don't want to pay their taxes, Christian nationalists who can only achieve their objectives under a minority rule, and various bigoted organizations who want to be normalized. This alliance paints a dreadful picture of liberal authoritarianism for its base so that their plans go mostly unnoticed. This con artist alliance gives birth to "Project 2025", which is in progress to install a power hungry buffoon they think they can control with ultimate executive power. But what they will find is that the narcissism of this buffoon cannot be controlled, and the normalization of what was once inexcusable will cause the Project 2025 alliance to deteriorate into warring factions. The conflict of these warring factions will eventually cause the downfall of the Republic sometime in the 2030s. From there, the United States will cease to be a superpower and fall into decline.
The carefully constructed alternative view of our downfall is of a socialist ideology hell bent on giving everything away for free using the tax dollars of the working man. An absurdist liberal agenda using "cancel culture" to mask censorship, take all the guns away, and then oppress the American people under an "elitist" authoritarian regime. Issues of racism and diversity are blown out of proportion to give unqualified invaders positions of power to help usher in this new regime. In circles still considered "extreme" there is already a deep state or illuminati type organization in place to ensure all of this happens.
How can we the people decide which of these downfall scenarios is true? In an age where most political leaders are viewed as incompetent, how can we truly choose the "lesser evil"?
I believe there are three main litmus tests which reveal the true nature of our united predicament. Each citizen must be able to educate themselves on how to run these tests.
1. Understand the scientific and medical community peer review process.
Our trust in science is marred by conspiracy, ego, and an overall lack of interest until it suits our needs in some social media debate or thanksgiving dinner argument. In order to check our ego, each citizen must understand how to access and read abstracts from scientific journals. They should have some understanding of the scientific peer review process and how theories and findings are properly challenged. Furthermore each citizen should understand how different medical and scientific fields relate, so when they are given a number like 95% of all scientists in the community agree, they have some concept of how much work, experimentation, cross analysis, and peer review went into such a massive community consensus. This understanding will protect citizens from media embellishment, misinformation, and fear of government agenda influence.
2. The Religiously motivated need to read scripture from at least two other religions other than their own.
Faith is powerful. It creates terrific motivation, hope, inspiration, and love. It also gives birth to terrible fear, and fear is easy to manipulate. The Religious Ego is a security blanket of truth. With God on your "side" how can you be wrong?
The religiously motivated must understand that scripture is a wonderful tool for discovering truth, but it is NOT the end all be all truth. Truth in faith must be discovered, peer reviewed, and tested just like science. One of the best ways to do this is to read scripture beyond what you are given as the ultimate truth. As a Christian if you have not read from the Quran or perhaps the Pali Canon, then you have not peer reviewed your own spirituality. You are not looking for items which differ, but what makes us all the same. The lesser evil understands that faith is a personal search. Even if the secular world is often hypocritical, it is better to be a hypocrite in a constant search for truth, rather than a hypocrite who claims to know the truth more than others.
3. Understand the circumstances where the constitution is strong versus situations where it is weak.
The constitution is a human document. Compared to other republics in history it is incredibly resilient. The system of checks and balances has allowed us to progress through time toward a more and more equal society. But the document is only as strong as the sincerity of those taking the oath to defend it. We the people often make the mistake of trusting the insincere of both parties. We the people have also distrusted the very sincere due to our economic pain. President H.W. Bush and President Jimmy Carter were both very sincere leaders who were eventually distrusted due to their environment. If leaders in both our political parties are telling us the other party is a threat to democracy, we cannot rely on our judgment of who to trust.
Instead, we need to understand how the constitution is deliberately designed for a free market. Capitalism is a right guaranteed by the constitution, but after our long journey it also limits the scope of this form of government so that individuals can be protected against the dangers of monopolistic or laissez-faire capitalism. In order to degrade democracy under a socialist agenda, it would require the complete destruction or disregard of the constitution almost unanimously from all three branches of government. Placing undocumented immigrants in jobs around the country or allowing Chinese companies to build industry and spy on us would not do the trick. Conversely, the laissez-faire protections can easily be removed by a narrow majority in all three branches, and if one executive is powerful enough and has unquestioning loyalty, the checks and balances of the constitution can be degraded over time.
We are seeing this now.
Too many of us have taken for granted our preferred leader or media outlet to tell us what is a threat. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of our guiding document requires more than reading it. It requires study of the history and development of each amendment. From there a clearer picture of threats begins to emerge.
In conclusion, I hope this helps at least one person accept that there is indeed a greater evil to be concerned about. Especially a person who thinks "every option was bad". It might mean letting go of pride. And that person should know, if they want to keep their pride, that it is perfectly acceptable to pretend you knew the greater evil all along. Just help us convince a few more people once you have figured it out by following the three research steps I recommend in this essay.
Heavily Penalized Stories Lacking the Flawed Alter Ego Shazam - The Fury of What Could have Been
Spoiler Warning for Shazam Fury of the Gods
Hey story fans, it’s your old pal the Writing Ref back with part two of “Stories Lacking the Flawed Alter Ego” series. This time, thanks to the opening weekend of Shazam: Fury of the Gods, we will be taking a hard look at the character, define what makes his alter ego special, and then go through how modern Hollywood writers earn penalty flags by getting the alter ego wrong. And oh man, do they get a lot wrong about Shazam.
Who is Shazam anyway? He looks pretty generic. Just some guy in a red super suit with a yellow lightning bolt on the front and a white cape. The look kind of gives the impression of a kid who put on his red pajamas one day, grabbed a white pillowcase, and then cut out a lightning bolt out of yellow construction paper. Bam! Superhero.
In actuality, Shazam was created in 1939 and first appeared in Whizz Comics #2 under the publication Fawcett Comics. Captain Marvel, as he was known, defended Fawcett city. Artist C. C. Beck and writer Bill Parke brought the new hero to the page as a direct competitor to Superman. The main difference between the two heroes lay in the fact Captain Marvel was a young boy named Billy Batson, granted his powers via magic by a wizard. We will not focus on why the name Captain Marvel entered a trademark dispute which resulted in the character being called Shazam, but rather focus on the alter ego, Billy to explain how writers of the Shazam character can often earn themselves a big penalty.
There have been many iterations of the Shazam Character in comics, cartoons, and even a television show starring Michael Gray from 1974 to 1976. But the most recent in the public conscious are the recent films Shazam from 2019 and Shazam: Fury of the Gods 2023. Both of these films unfortunately earn a penalty against the alter ego because this version of Shazam can be described as the 1988 movie “Big” starring Tom Hanks, except a Superhero movie. Or maybe it is more accurate to say “Big” took inspiration from Shazam. The 1988 Tom Hanks movie even had a poster inspired by the long time comic.
It is worth noting how comparing the Shazam films to Big misrepresents some key aspects. These films are also the story of a jaded orphan finding a family and they also push the boundaries of family fun with some seriously terrifying horror-inspired moments sprinkled in. However, the comparison works well for purposes of this blog.
There is nothing inherently wrong with making the superhero a powered up version of the teenage alter ego. It makes for an entertaining and emotionally engaging story. However, this hero to ego relationship cannot be sustained indefinitely. There are several reasons why.
The difference in critical and audience reception between the 2019 movie and its sequel Fury of the Gods will go down in history as a classic example of not what to do with your superhero alter ego—assuming Hollywood writers or executives ever realize the mistakes outlined below.
2. The Alter-Ego cannot be more competent or mature than the Hero.
In both films, Billy Batson (played by Asher Angel) is very down-to-earth and dealing with a lot of emotional trauma. Contrast this to Zachary Levi’s Shazam, who acts like a thirteen year old fanboy of superheroes. In the first film, this dynamic nearly works, because the audience believes the superhero persona sets Billy free of his trauma. It also works because his new best friend Freddie Freeman (Played by Jack Dylan Grazer) is the epidemy of a superhero fanboy. It is almost as if Shazam in the first film is actually the hero version of Freddy even more than Billy, but the audience suspends its disbelief because we feel like Billy wants to see the world through more optimistic eyes.
However, in the second film Billy is even more even keeled. Asher Angel is not in the film as Billy much, and we do not get to see if time has made him loosen up to be more like Shazam. Instead, Zachary Levi does most of the lifting and he still plays it the same as a thirteen year old. They even turn the lack of dynamic into a joke, remarking about how Shazam lacks the Wisdom of Solomon he is supposed to have. The joke is cleaver, but it highlights the essential problem in the ego to hero dynamic.
In otherwards, the Hero should always be the more mature, confident, and capable version of a dual-identity character. The best version of the alter ego.
1. The Alter-Ego must in some way aspire to be the hero he or she transforms into
This dynamic is often very subtle. Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent are actually the mask covering up the hero beneath. The ideal self of these two heroes already exists. Spiderman is the responsible version of Peter, but Spiderman is NOT just peter in a mask with powers. Peter parker is perhaps the most interesting and complex of the alter egos we will cover in this series. (We will get into more detail in a future entry). In contrast, Shazam is the most on-the-nose when it comes to this rule.
Billy Batson has always been the superhero fan boy in the comics, and he aspires to be just like them. In the second film, the writers actually get closest to this hero-worship than the first with how he dreams of going on a date with Wonder Woman. Unfortunately, it comes across of course as more about the sexual nature of the fantasy rather than the hero idealism it should have been. It is a shame he could not also admire Superman more as Billy does in most comic runs. The reasons Superman is suddenly absent (yet again) is a sore spot for DC fans, and worth its own essay.
As I pointed out earlier, throughout the two films they accidently give Freddy the correct alter ego for Shazam. Freddy should have awakened the fanboy in Billy more, not just in Shazam. Billy being a rejected orphan, rather than an actual orphan with his twin sister Mary, changes the simple dynamic and complicates the trauma Billy must overcome, but it was not insurmountable to achieve. The issue is the thread of the theme got lost for the second film and did not hit as hard.
Conclusions: There are many other penalties I could call on the second film in particular. Shazam: Fury of the Gods seemed doomed to fail, and most of the reasons seem to be because the studio was between a Rock and a Hard place.
But moving all that aside the Alter-Ego to Hero relationship is critical to get right. The first step any writer must realize is they cannot be the same person. The hero is either the mask or the ideal for the alter ego. In the absence of the hero, the alter ego can struggle to reach the ideal and either succeed or fail at this journey—but it must be attempted, and it cannot be abandoned.
This has been another Heavily Penalized, and I’ll see you all at the next entry. Would love comments and discussion, so please sign up for notifications and leave your thoughts!
How NOT to Write Your Superman - Forgetting the Meek Alter Ego
In the last ten years, we have had two supermen—three if you count Brandon Routh’s return to the role for the CW television event “Crisis on Infinite Earths. (The Flash Season 6, Episode 9). And I do count him because, although his appearance was short, he alone avoided the Alter Ego Holding penalty. To be fair, his Clark Kent in the 2006 film Superman Returns was meant to be a direct emulation of the Superman GOAT, Christopher Reeve. And by the time Routh reprised the roll as a nod to the Kingdom Come Superman, he had nailed the meek personality of Clark.
Incredibly, every other incarnation of Superman has done away with the key ingredient to Clark Kent—meekness. I could penalize every version, but this essay would become a novella. Tom Welling’s Clark on Smallville, and even the Dean Cain version of Superman in 1993’s Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, made Clark sexy and confident in dangerous situations. Don’t get me wrong, those Clark Kents still felt like a man who grew up in a small town, but they were still missing an essential bumbling clumsiness and naivete to Clark.
Even though there have been some incredible Superman stories over the years; the juxtaposition of the meek Clark Kent versus the ideal persona of Superman has been missing. The conflict of being a god versus being human has been done decently, but the meek version of Clark Kent goes beyond this theme. Writers have either forgotten its importance, or perhaps the thought is a meek Clark Kent won’t attract audiences.
To simplify this discussion, I am throwing the penalty flag on the last decade of Superman—played on the big screen by Henry Cavill and on the small screen by Tyler Hoechlin in Superman and Lois. They both are guilty of failing to capture the proper demeanor of the alter ego.
I would not be surprised if I get a lot of Red Challenge flags thrown my way on Tyler Hoechlin’s portrayal of Clark / Superman, and to be fair his show gets a high score on the Super-meter. The writers of the show clearly know what makes Superman unique, and sometimes Hoechlin’s Clark even seems out of his element. But the intrigue here is this particular Clark is in a different place in his life than we have ever seen him before. He’s learning to be a parent of teenagers. As a result, the human side of Superman is tested in ways we have never seen.
However, I would not call this Clark properly meek. If anything, when he isn’t struggling with being a father, he is even more confident as Clark than either Dean Cain or Tom Welling. And yet, I still find it hard to penalize the Superman and Lois show because most of the time Clark is around people who already know his secret. This means the main offender of the Alter Ego Holding Penalty is Henry Cavil and the Snyderverse Superman.
The Snyderverse Superman reigns from the 2013 film Man of Steel, to yes, even his ill-fated cameo at the end of the recent Black Adam film. And this Superman gets a lot right, especially if his story arc includes the Zack Snyder cut of Justice League. However, it also gets a lot wrong, and it has been discussed to death for a decade. I am very late to the party here. However, I don’t see a lot of discussion concerning the lack of meekness from Cavil’s Clark. Mostly the penalties of this Clark concern the decision to have him hide his powers from the world to such an extent he would let his father get killed by a tornado. The Man of Steel Clark is shown dealing with bullies, discovering some of his powers in a traumatic event, then using his powers to save a bus full of his peers, but the idea of wearing glasses to disguise himself as Clark Kent is sort of given to us only as a tongue-in cheek moment at the end of the film.
The extended cut of Batman v Superman shows us Clark with good investigative journalism skills, but he is also a confident Clark who stands up to his boss in front of his peers. Popular culture often jokes about how silly a pair of glasses seems as a disguise, but when Clark Kent acts as confident as Superman, the disguise becomes even more laughable. The glasses aren’t really the disguise. It’s the demeanor. Christopher Reeve showed us brilliantly in a single moment in Superman 2, and nobody else has ever come close to a performance showing audiences how important meekness is to the persona of Clark.
But the meekness isn’t merely important as a disguise. And, no, Bill’s speech about Superman in Kill Bill Part Two is not correct either. Clark is not how Superman sees humanity. Rather, it is how we see ourselves, and Kal El knows this about humanity. Deep down we all struggle with our imperfections. We are goofballs, weaklings, and unsure of ourselves. Confidence comes with practice, even for the most skilled extravert. We all face the struggle to be accepted. Clark Kent isn’t simply a mask. It is a declaration that Superman knows what we are going through, so that when he takes his God-like form and dons the red cape, we know he is someone to be trusted.
A friend.
And that’s why Snyder’s Clark Kent gets a big fat penalty flag for dismissing the alter ego as less important than the question of Superman’s humanity. Let us hope James Gunn’s Superman will restore the meekness to Clark. When audiences fill theaters to watch Superman: Legacy, we will likely meet his Clark Kent first. If that Clark has a bumbling slouch to him, then we will know we are probably in for a treat. But if the Clark is sexy and confident . . . it will be a red flag bigger than Superman’s cape.
Heavily Penalized – Stories Lacking the Flawed Alter Ego
Introduction
Hello Story-Fans. This blog series will cover a major penalty of modern story telling.
The Alter-Ego Holding Penalty.
In 1903, in a small theater in Nottingham, England a stage play opened which would launch a new mythology into the mind of popular culture. Set in the early stages of the French Revolution in 1792, the play is about a daring English swordsman who rescues individuals sentenced to death by the guillotine. This hero is a master of disguise, an imaginative planner, and a quick-thinking escape artist. With each rescue he taunts his enemies by leaving behind a card showing a small flower—a scarlet pimpernel. To hide his true identity, as the Scarlet Pimpernel, Sir Percy Blakeney presents himself in everyday life as a dim-witted, foppish playboy. Sound familiar?
That’s because Baroness Emma Orczy’s play (and later series of novels) would go on to inspire heroes like Zorro, The Shadow, Batman, Superman, and so many other heroes with an alter ego. These “Super Heroes” would not only capture the imagination of popular culture, they would time and again find ways to break or even reverse the patterns of classical mythology. Thus, this discussion assumes some knowledge of Joseph Campbell’s model of the hero’s journey as outlined his famous work, The Hero with a Thousand Faces.
It is important to disclaim; scholars agree the superhero has become in many ways our modern version of mythological figures. A few of them, like Marvel’s Thor, are even lifted directly from those ancient poems and legends. In Campbell’s model, the hero of myth could cross the threshold of the normal world into the supernatural world and would never return until the journey was complete. Marvel’s Captain America fits this mold nicely.
But Baroness Orczy added something special to myth. Now a potential “Hercules” could hide and live as a regular man. A Prometheus could escape his punishment from the Gods by disguising himself so no one would know where to find him. Plenty of Gods had disguised themselves as mortals before, but hardly ever to live two different lives for long. Usually it was either to manipulate some poor soul as a trickster, or to get busy with a mortal woman and then ghost her. (Looking at you, Zeus).
In this new mythology, the hero could cross the threshold into the supernatural and return to the normal world at will. Arguably, the best “Superhero” stories explore the consequences of breaking the Campbellian mold—the conflict created by attempting to find balance between the ego and the alter-ego. And many authors, from those seeking to debut to big budget million-dollar modern superhero movies, get this conflict terribly wrong. Over the next few weeks, we will be looking at the right way and the wrong way to create a juxtaposition between the hero and his alter ego, and there is no one better to begin with than the last son of Krypton, Superman.
Week 3 – She-Ra and He-Man - The Naïve and the Lazy
Week 4 – Spiderman – The Jerk
Rolling the Dice in Storytelling
Some say writer’s block doesn’t exist—it’s a made-up phantom that authors use to get out of writing. Yet when our imaginary friends won’t speak to us, the frustration is real. Throw in imposter syndrome, where the story we are working on never feels good enough compared to the dream we first envisioned, and an author can easily stagnate on a page for days. The little black cursor where the next word should go blinks on repeat, taunting us with our lack of creativity.
May I suggest rolling the dice? The storyteller is but a mouthpiece for an entity with a life of its own. Every story has a destiny even before you put it to the page, so believe in that destiny.
Ask anyone who has ever been a Dungeon Master. When the fantasy role playing game Dungeons and Dragons hit the shelves in 1974, the tradition of the oral storyteller who used to lead campfire tales returned. In the game, Players create their own character and then role dice for everything from fighting legendary monsters to opening a door. Every role of a twenty-sided die can change the direction of a story completely.
I can imagine some of you readers saying to yourselves,
“But I am a planner and outliner. My storytelling doesn’t rely on dice rolling!”
Well don’t take my word for it, then. Take the example of voice actor and storyteller, Matthew Mercer. Matt made a career of voice acting the English versions of many Anime dubs, but in 2015 he began a podcast with a group of other voice actors called Critical Role. Little did they know how large their following would become, or that their gaming adventures would turn into a critically acclaimed animation series called Vox Machina.
Although Matt outlined and planned the course of his story, his friends would come up with some outlandish ideas. Fate always played a role, but never was it on display more when one of his players activate a trap in a dungeon. The trap killed the character of Vex, played by voice actress Laura Bailey. Here are a few alternating photos. Some from the group of gamers as Laura is told her character has died, and they are somewhat paired with the same moment playing out in the Amazon show.
As Dungeon Master (or king author) in control of the fate of his players, Matt Mercer now had to make a decision. One of the other players had the ability to pull off a resurrection spell, and he succeeded. Mr. Mercer could have let the resurrection happen and continued the story as if nothing had happened. He no doubt did not plan on killing off any of his characters/players. If this were a trilogy of novels, it would only be the second book, or act two of a very large story. However, as a storyteller, Matt understood a death must have consequence and meaning.
Liam O'Brien, who plays the elven rogue Vax and brother to Vex offered his life in exchange for his sister on a whim. Mercer took this offer and ran with it, crafting an entire story arc involving Vax becoming the champion of the Goddess of Death – the Raven Queen. It was a captivating tale the storyteller did not see coming, but it now captivates audiences, and they cannot wait for more. Make sure you check out Vox Machina on Amazon Prime for more twists of fate.
More than that, if you find yourself stuck in your story, maybe try rolling some dice and letting fate decide. Kill off a character unexpectedly. Have two lovers become mortal enemies. Have a hero fall to the dark side. Have a villain redeem herself. You don’t always have to make up all the rules. Not even we authors are masters of fate, not even over our own characters. We merely respond to the will of the story and build something beautiful from it.
How I Got My Agent
On January 3, 2022, I signed with a literary agent. Terrie Wolf of AKA Literary decided around two weeks prior to take a chance on my fun, high concept, but campy espionage novel. Yet even two days prior to signing, I still could not quite bring myself to believe it. We spent four hours on the phone on New Year’s Day discussing the near future and she reassured me this was no dream. After more than fifteen years of trying, my foot had finally managed to wedge itself past the threshold of the literary industry. How did this happen?
A little bit of luck, the will of God (or connected energies of the Universe if the reader prefers), and a lot of perseverance.
The story begins in 2003, when I started writing my first book. It took me three years to finish with my own editing and re-drafting, of what was still a monstrous, near 500-page behemoth. I didn’t know any better, as I had seen large science fiction novels on the shelves all the time. I learned I was supposed to find myself an agent to get published, so I queried off and on for two years. There were a few online articles and blogs on how to write a query, and it seemed easy enough. Two years later I allowed myself to become discouraged, and decided to self-publish.
Self-Publishing back then wasn’t like today, where it’s easy to throw a book up on amazon. This isn’t to take anything away from the glorious journey if the Indy author, but I was active-duty Air Force. I didn’t have the luxury to sell my brand properly, nor did I have the connections or the means. And so, I fell victim to the Template Agency, iUniverse. I paid around 4,000 dollars to have my book edited and published. One can still find Fortress Earth online. Beware the Template Agency. Whether you try to go the independent route or tough it out like I did to find an agent and get traditionally published, no one should go bankrupt trying to publish a book. I never truly comprehend my mistake until I attended my first writers conference.
At the Alaska Writers conference in Anchorage, Alaska, I learned the importance of word count for a first-time author in different genres. I learned the thought process an agent goes through on a query, and what they find cliché. I learned market trends, but more importantly, I learned how to hook, how to edit the first page, and how to write a log line. I would attend many conferences through the years as I wrote more books, and I got better at the face-to face pitch. I even got a few full requests from conferences, but none ever panned out.
Armed with new knowledge, I sat down in 2008 to write a new book about a CIA Agent infiltrating a game show called Prime Time Spies. When I completed it more than a year later and sent out the first round of queries, it got a handful of requests which all later came back as rejections. I continued to query through the years and wrote three more books. I learned the value of finding critique partners and joined a forum of tough-love authors who would not let the small mistakes pass. Several members of the group went on to be published, and one is now an agent herself. All but one of my books received periodic manuscript requests, and after months of hope each agent declined. Prime Time Spies fell out of date and was shelved, absent from my query list while I concentrated on science fiction and fantasy titles.
Cut to 2020 and I decide I need a new book to query while I tried my hand at a fantasy novel. I gave Prime Time Spies a complete overhaul, updating it from the technology of 2008 to something more modern. A network television show becomes a program to binge watch on a fictional streaming service, and the changes flowed from there. I send out a round of queries, to include Terrie Wolf. She rejected the project.
I am usually thorough at tracking my queries. I use a website called duotrope.com which is helpful in staying organized. Since 2017 I have sent 527 queries on four different projects. Somehow, I forgot I had already queried Terrie and did not double check my history. With some agents this will get you an immediate rejection or a no response, but in this case, timing was everything. Terrie responded in an email that she was “smitten” and wanted to schedule a phone call.
This is highly unorthodox, I thought to myself. She didn’t even make a request to see more of the manuscript. Instead, she explained on the call how she would like me to cut ten to fifteen thousand words and resubmit. At the time, Prime Time Spies sat at around 103,000 words. I knew it was a bit long, but there were many speculative elements to the story I thought would excuse a few more words for an adult project. Besides, the book had a history of at least getting full requests. I worked for four to six months to get the book into shape, the longer I took, the more I was certain Terrie would lose interest. At the start of 2021 she had a lot on her plate, and indeed it seemed I had taken too long, but when I resubmitted, I got a partial request.
Three months later, I was told to go ahead and send the full. The partial and full requests both came via phone conversation, where she revealed more and more about how she was trying to figure out where she could sell my unique premise. I was encouraged, but after so many let downs, I didn’t get my hopes up. But the call did come, and I remember being so breathless after I received the good news I almost fainted and had to lower myself to the ground. My wife, hearing the excitement in my voice, ended up on the floor next to me. The moment we had waited for was finally here.
So friends, there is a long journey ahead, and a lot of work to do. But I never lost faith. All it would take is for one person to believe in me, and now it feels as though the sky is the limit. It takes time to figure out our talents when we are young. It takes more time to decide which talents to pursue and make our bliss, but I believe where talent and perseverance collide, we find our destiny.