Justice Patrol: Future Pairings

It may not fully come to pass since the characters have developed to the point that I just chronicle their adventures, I have no control over their destiny. <_> But here's an outline of future pairings regarding the group.

Flannery/Hank: The Official Couple. They have been since day one and honestly I couldn't think of anyone else. No matter the ship tease. Also they've been through so much to not go down this route.

Matthew/Dinah: For the same reasons.

Now the next few could surprise some.

Violet/Hiro: Not the detective! The other Violet. There was a subtle hint. Hiro's still gay but it's more of a Chasing Amy type of relationship. And I don't think it will be a permanent one. Don't worry, they will find someone down the road.

Cleric and Black Knight: I bet some of you thought it would be Knight and Archmage did ya? They're more like heterosexual life partners. Cleric and Black Knight has been developed enough for this to work.

I'm thinking of a one night stand between Raven and Venus but that I'll have to ask my better half.

Wendy and Captain Nemesis: What can I say? They're cute together. Also, The Princess and The Rogue is a classic concept.

Sura and Dude: It's a good thing Dude's a speedster. He's gonna need the stamina.

Adrian & Amazonia:Possible crack but could work.

How To Beat Writers Block

As a writer I've come up with this kind of problem and some of the people would advise to not write. Basically telling you to just give up. Anyone who'd suggest this is full of BS and is not that much of a writer. Period.

The best advice I can give would be an advise that a writer once said; take the last line of dialogue a character has said and do the opposite. You'd ask yourself why the character would say that and it takes the character into a more interesting direction than you originally intend.

My method is if you're hitting a creative wall then write a random event and keep on writing till your character gets himself or herself out of it. Say your scene is just a character walking down the street? Your random scene could be him witnessing a mugging, encountering a creepy stalker, witness someone jumping off of a building. Damn, talk about dark. Yet with this you've just turned your character's common routine upside down and now it's time to see how the character adapts to it.

I also heard of character journals. Make a journal told by the character that narrates his day to day life. It might give you inspiration for your story.

I'd also recommend finding inspiration in movies and tv. The majority of my characters are usually inspired off of that. When I was working on CAU Legacy my character Flannery was what you'd get if Buffy Summers had super powers. I also tweaked Jennifer's character in; What if Joyce Summers knew about her daughter's lifestyle? And she's a cop.

There are many ways to get out of writers block. It all boils down to how determined a person is to beat it.

Does Making The Protagonist Lose Hurt The Character?

We all love our underdog story, a scrappy protagonist who'd climb up the latter and defy all odds. But what if they didn't? What if the underdog loses? Would it hurt the character?

It can be a double-edged sword. If you have a character win alot then it becomes predictable. The audience are no longer invested because they know the character is going to overcome each obstacle. But if you have the character lose everytime then audiences sees the character as you've written him, a loser. An example on the former, Goku from Dragonball. An example on the latter, the heroes of Young Justice.

A hero can look good, even in defeat, as long as you have the hero likable enough and showcase him working his butt off to achieve a victory.

In the first Rocky film it did Rocky's underdog story pretty well. You can sympathize Rocky's shortcomings and he knows full well that he couldn't defeat Apollo. His only hope is going the distance. Yet whenever he comes close to beating him you'd find yourself cheering Rocky on. Adrian viewing the fight was clearly her channeling the movie viewing audience. When it was all over, Rocky won the public over. Even in defeat.

As a writer I'm a firm believer in making my characters earn their victories. To use Rocky as an example again, he had a rematch against Apollo Creed. What I liked about this rematch was Apollo was taking this rematch seriously and once Rocky got his head in the game he took it seriously too. And he earned that victory against Apollo.

So it doesn't hurt in having your character lose a battle. As long as you don't make your character too pathetic in the process. Because, when that character eventually earns a victory, his victory will be glorious.

Making A Work of Fiction Original

It can be hard to come up with something original. Especially as everything has been done before. Just when you think you've come up with a unique idea you realize that your unique idea has been used before.

 What makes an idea unique is how a writer takes a common concept and tweak it into something that isn't used often. Using a persona example my series A Heroes Journey takes place in a world where the majority of the population has super powers. Non-Powered individuals exist but they don't go out and become superheroes like the powered ones do and it's the Non-Powered individual who are the minority. And what I did was taking something common within the superhero genre but made it a little unique.

 Another method is taking something from real life and use it as a base of inspiration. It could be something from the news or a work of history. But just be careful. You don't want it to be too similar. 

I also would use something from mythology & folklore as inspiration. There are a lot of unique things you could find there and it would come in handy when you want to make a unique fantasy creature,

Horror Central: The Funhouse Massacre

I'll give the movie this. It did live up to it's title. There was a funhouse and there was a massacre.....yet the killers were a little pathetic.

Don't get me wrong the movie does a good job in playing up the old school horror tropes and I love the fact that there's practical blood and gore. While the killers had a very cool build up and their backstories were neat I personally find them to be too much hype and not enough back up. Unfortunately, they got by because their victims were....idiots.

I mean they were killing people in full display yet the people took their sweet ass time to put two and two together and say "HOLY SHIT! THIS IS FUCKING REAL!!!!!"

The psychos could be holding a sign up that reads : "We really are killers, dumb shits" and they'd still believe it's all part of the show.

But that ain't the tip of the stupid iceberg. The movie seems to have one particular character that honestly took me out of the movie. The Idiot Cop. There is a name for this kind of character, he's called The Jar Jar. He's the comic relief character that you're supposed to laugh with but instead you just want him to die horribly. On both occasions I've been rooting for the psycho clown to kill him. To his credit he wasn't an asshole character. He was just your typical bumbling cop who probably would have worked better in a bumbling cop movie. But never in a horror movie!!!

I've seen The Fool characters like him before. But most of the time they're endering. Like Marty from Cabin In The Woods. It helps that Marty can be surprisingly smart when he has to be.

But what really pissed me off was how he outlived this badass lady cop during the final act. I was like....ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!!!!!! And he survived Rocco, twice. He even succeeded in putting him down. And got a one liner afterwards. He wishes he were John McClane.

I just find it interesting that these psychos succeeded in killing so many people but they couldn't kill this one character whose so stupid that he'd trip into some death trap. Ugh!

There is one character that I like though. Machete! He was a comic relief character done right. For one, he isn't a fucking dumbass. The guy was surprisingly genre savvy. He didn't go with the group to that funhouse because he had a bad vibe about the place. The only reason he went back was because he encountered one of the Funhouse victims. And from that point on he took several levels of badass! Also, he survived!

I like that the main characters have surprisingly heroic traits. Like how the main girl saved the victim from that dentist. Least till dumbass cop shot the victim. *bangs head on desk* And when members of their crew died they actually gave a shit. I'd even credit dumbass cop in feeling bad when his partner died. That motivated him to kill Rocco.

So overall I give the movie a D+. Nice old school horror callbacks and good characters who gave a shit if someone died and would actually try to save someone. Too bad it was weight down by an unnecessary dumb comic relief and psycho killers who were appallingly incompetent. Say what you will about some of the Heads in 31 but at least they get the job done. Well Doom-Head does anyway.

Guardians of The Galaxy Should Be A Stand Alone Film

The movie, IMO, is polarizing at best and I consider it an average movie. I do consider Guardians as close to an 80's Space Opera homage as I can get. And if it fixes a few problems then we'd have a pretty good space opera film. The best approach should be distancing itself from the other Marvel films as far as possible.

It's like the age-old debate of should X-Men crossover with the MCU? Some say Yay while others feel that its better off on its own. To me X-Men is better off establishing its own world, cramming itself into the MCU would just make the continuity all the more messed up. Also, the MCU has already developed to the point that incorporating the X-Men would just be silly now.

Marvel Comics have enough science fiction history that Guardians is capable of establishing it's own world and not have to piggyback off of the previous MCU films to do so. Guardians should have their own recurring big bad that the group alone has to defeat rather than saving said big bad for The Avengers or something. Honestly, with the right person and development, I'd be more interested in Thanos being established as the big bad for the Guardians of The Galaxy crew and the group working to defeat him. I'd much rather see a trilogy of GOTG movies that develops to that point. Unfortunately, that can't happen due to the whole Infinity Gems thing. If you think about it, since the majority of the crew's backstories are connected to Thanos then having him be the soul villain the crew has to defeat sounds like a better storytelling scenario than Thanos just being a one off Avengers villain. At least with Thanos being the antagonist to the GOTG it provides some personal conflict. What made the first Avengers movie work is that there was personal conflict between The Avengers and Loki. In Infinity War, Thanos would be some guy the group has to beat.

So yeah, I'm in the minority that future films should only focus on establishing the group and the sci-fi universe the film is based in.