I haven't written anything in more than a week and a half. I was hoping to write 1-2 stories each week after the end of Camp NaNoWriMo in July, but I've fallen into a bit of a rut. I still haven't finished Motivational Poser, the story I was ostensibly trying to write all of July. I took a lot at some of my earlier ideas from June and decided to work on a story titled Enigma, which may be two completely unrelated stories, and the one I'm actually working on -- about what the Gentleman Brawler has been up to -- probably needs a completely different name.
I've been thinking about this story for days without knowing exactly how to begin it or what the plot is. Every plot I considered was a much longer story than I wanted to write, but it may be that this is a subject that can't be fit into a 1,500 word story. I think I finally hit upon something when I decided that not only would the Gentleman Brawler be given a new life, but also his nemesis the Boston Breaker, who originally killed him.
But then -- the Boston Breaker was not really his nemesis. That was Madman Judas. He also fought other villains, sometimes with the aid of friends. The only one I definitively have written into my history is that he teamed up with Nikola Tesla and fought Rasputin on June 30, 1908 -- and that Tesla used a Death Ray that was responsible for the Tunguska event. But I also know another mad scientist named Professor Honestly St. Normal was his next door neighbor, so he probably fought that guy too.
The point is, the Boston Breaker was a no-name strikebreaker thug in a costume, who probably had never met the Gentleman Brawler before the encounter in which the Breaker killed the Brawler. The Boston Brawler's only claim to fame is that incident -- he'd have been forgotten by history if not for that. So calling him the Gentleman Brawler's nemesis his a huge stretch.
I still want to bring him back and have them face off, because from the view of history, it makes sense that the person who killed you is some sort of nemesis. I just don't think it makes sense from the Gentleman Brawler's point of view. He has zero respect for this guy.
Anyway, I've written a bit on that. It gives me an angle to work from.
This past week Twitter has been filled with talk of Nazi's and fascists, and many call-backs to what people like Stan Lee have said on the subject in the past, or what cartoon characters did to fight Nazi Germany during World War II. I even bought a book from Amazon on the subject -- Take That, Adolf! The Fighting Comic Books of the Second World War. Take That, Adolph!
My hope is that I can get some ideas for a couple of Grandpa Anarchy stories from this book, but I've already written part of a story based on things I've read on Twitter. Grandpa Anarchy has a long history of fighting Nazi supervillains -- but to date I haven't actually explored that as much as I could. His first big nemesis was a Nazi superscientist named Doctor Zero Hour. I've also established in a couple of stories that he fought a female supervillain named Frauline Hatra, who has a secret Hatra organization (I wanted something similar to Captain America's Hydra). There ought to be several more, I just have never figured out who they were.
I've also used them several times in stories, but I've never had them argue their Nazi philosophy with Grandpa. That's what I'm trying to do with what I wrote today -- although I haven't figured out exactly how to build a story around it, or what the punchline would be. I titled it "Nazi Hunter" for now, because I like the idea of a Nazi Hunter. One of the things I read on Twitter this week was about Arnold Schwartzenegger donating 100,000 dollars to a charity that teaches tolerance, and was named after a famous Nazi Hunter who was Arnold's friend. That seems like something that needs to be in a story somewhere.
I've mostly tried to avoid making direct reference to recent world events or people in my stories. Grandpa has met the president before, and it was someone other than any actual real president we've had. So I don't want to suddenly establish in my Grandpa universe that Donald Trump is president -- but maybe someone similar could be a stand-in for him. I'll have to figure that part out. Actually, if the president were to turn out to be a super villain, that could be a lot of fun. ^_^ But that's something that just occurred to me -- that would take a lot of work to set up and deal with.
I might want to have one of Grandpa's sidekicks turn out to be a right-wing nut who buys in to Nazi ideals and becomes a villain. He's had sidekicks become villains before, but mostly because they decided they didn't like him.
Anyway, if I'm lucky I'll be able to craft at least one of these ideas into an actual story by tomorrow or on the weekend.
No comments:
Post a Comment