Merry Christmas!

No posts until January 3rd! Not having to read my shrill, grammatically-challenged posts for nearly two weeks is my gift to you!

Making the Villain Part Two: The Evil is in the Details

"The villain is the conflict, ergo, the intelligence of the villain directly corresponds to how unique/interesting/smart that conflict is." A quote from "The Villain Makes the Plot" entry of TV Tropes.

You can have a pretty lame protagonist and story can still hold some water, but have a lame villain and people are going to be groaning from sunup to sundown (and probably the time in between, too).

So, today instead of actual archetypes I'm going to talk more on specific details of a villain.

Everyone hates the villain, even the villain's minions

This is a terrible way to make a villain. It's easy to make him evil when everyone hates him, but it's also not realistic. The best villains (both in real life and in fiction) weren't hated bastards by every single being that ever existed, rather they've had an entire group that absolutely loved him to the point of being fanatical. Hitler had his Nazis, Lord Voldemort had his Death Eaters, Vader had his Stormtroopers. If the villain is hated by all, especially his minions, ask yourself this: How did he get into so much power in the first place?

Sure, maybe the guy had some phenomenal cosmic power (itty bitty living space is still under debate), but it still takes minions to help run an evil empire, and it takes those minions to help seize control. The Big Bad is taking care of the large problems of a takeover, but you need minions to help with the little things.

If you're being a jerk all the time then you're not going to get any minions. If you don't get any minions then it's pretty much an inevitability that you're just some sad, angry guy who kicks puppies until either you're squashed by the hero, or else a villain who's designed better is going to squash you (for ironic effect he will send his most happy and devoted servant to do it for him.)

Maybe there's a way around that, though. Maybe the Big Bad who's hated by all didn't start out as evil, he just got corrupted or something, but he's still in power on the basis that he at least used to be loved.

That's all not to say that he has to be nice to his minions, or even treat them with respect. What's more important is the minion's attitude toward the villain, not the other way around. This is how you end up with situations of abusive relationships, which is a bit of a dark road to go down, but villains are all about dark roads.

Make your villain respectable

Don't matter how evil the guy is, he has to be respectable in some way. Again, how else did he manage to get power unless he also had respect in some manner? Don't make him a bumbling oaf, or the comic relief, unless your story is so silly that not making him like that actually detracts from the whole story. You want your readers to like the villain on some level "Whoa, that guy is so evil," or "Whoa, that guy is so awesome," are both because he is a respectable villain.

Give your villain standards/limits

No matter how evil, a bad guy has standards. Standards are one of the main things that make the villain interesting, and sometimes his standards actually manage to amplify how evil he really is. Avoid some cliches, like the guy owning an aviary, because he will, inevitably, end up squeezing one of his precious birds to death when he gets some bad news.

Maybe your villain refuses to hurt women, or children, or animals. They can even be twisted standards, like the bad guy sends off some poor peasant villager to be tortured to death but keeps the peasant's dog and takes care of it and coos at it while the dog's original owner is screaming in the dungeon as his arms are relocating themselves to the far end of the room without him.

It's also the standards and limits that can further complicate the morally grey area if a second villain happens to come along. Villain 2 is a pretty bad guy, he's bad enough that Villain 1 has a beef with him. Villain 1 can then either team up with the hero in some way, or else try to fight Villain 2 in his own way. For a quick example, think Spiderman 3. For a longer, more deliciously complex example, read the Dresden Files series (especially Small Favor.) For a real life example consider how child rapists are murdered in prison by other felons.

Don't always make it visually obvious

Yeah, have some fun with some of your villains, but don't always give them black-clawed fingernails, twirly mustaches, fanged yellow teeth, a black wardrobe, horns, etc etc. Better yet, use those qualities as a focus on someone else. Harry Potter was so obsessed with the black-robed, greasy-haired, mean Professor Snape that he failed to pay any attention to the puny Professor Quirrel being weird. Actually, the whole Snape rivalry continued throughout the series and, as much as fangirls like to portray him as a pretty-boy emo, I think a hefty chunk of Harry's mistrust was mostly because Snape was a dark-clad jerk.

That said...

Don't make evil ugly

There are some obvious villains out there, but most of the time in real life you always hear people say how normal and everyday the guy looks. Yeah, that's actually part of what makes them so dastardly.

That's not to say I'm telling you to go to the other extreme. Making the villain a super-hunky pretty boy may have been original and mind-blowing at some point, but now has been so overdone that I think people are actually expecting it even more than the villain being ugly. The same holds a bit true to good guys only being attractive. It's a bit uncommon for good guys to be ugly, but that's another talk for another time.

And that being said...

Evil is evil

While it sounds like the redundant caption of an LOLcat, it is actually the logic of some people who are trying to create villains. This ties in to my above statements of a respectable villain with minions who like him.

Don't make your villain some guy who always shoots the bearer of bad news, or kills random minions out of spite, or kicks a quota of puppies before breakfast.

Evil Names

Along with looking evil, there's some pretty obvious evil names that kick the cheese factor into high-gear.

Titles, like The (Dark/Lost/Black/Mad/Red/Nameless/Evil...apply as needed) One. Ridiculously done with James Patterson's Witch and Wizard series. I just can't read a book when they're fighting a guy called The One Who Is The One and treating it wholly serious. this is a name for a guy in a parody.

Anything with the letter X in it (or the number thirteen, or roman numerals...although roman numerals are actually evil, I'll give you that.). Anything with the letter K, this is variable, however. If you're using a real name, like Kate, you're good, but making up a name like, say, Kalchek, it's going to be pretty obvious. Ending in "th". Anything with "mal" (mal is actually latin for "bad"). Mor-anything is the same. Morgranth, Morfield, Morloch.


Morbo!

Making a guy called Scar or Wormtounge are also poor examples. Even if they're not slimy-looking, a slimy name is obvious, if not more so.

Summing everything up

All of this can be wrapped up into a single sentence: Be subtle sometimes.

Of course, there are still other factors to consider.

Killing the villain makes a void

If you have a respectable villain that his minions love, what happens when he dies? There has to be a reason he's been in power for so long, and not just because he's evil and power-hungry. There could be something else waiting on the sidelines to take over, or the villain was a Lesser of Two Evils. The hero doesn't always win, and doesn't always defeat the villain. Creating a (metaphorical) chaotic void when the villain does might just be what keeps the hero in check, and allows the villain to reign supreme.

And most importantly...

Have fun with your villain

Heroes have to be in check all the time, you have to constantly keep the good guy doing good things. With a villain you can make him good, evil, mean, nasty, nice, complicated, dark, bright. Every spectrum of everything there is. Villains are just plain fun. Fun to create, fun to write, fun to imagine. There's a reason actors scramble at the chance of playing one in movies.

Finally we close with a more obscure idea of an antagonist.

Sometimes there is no villain at all

There are quite a few times when there's no actual villain at all, or rather, it's not an actual person. In medical shows the antagonist is a disease, or really little kid's shows usually have more of an idea: "I can't find the salt shaker"...I really have no idea what kid's shows are actually about.



I watched a single episode when I was sick once, and foamed with rage.

Quite often, something with no villain or anything like that, the conflict arises through something like the main character's own internal conflict (the hero and villain are one and the same) or a sickness (cancer is a villain.)

 

Talking about villains can be some pretty dark stuff. After talking about domestic abuse, prisoners murdering each other, cancer, Dora the Explorer, and other evil subjects, I think we can all agree we need something to lighten the mood a bit.

 

So I close with a video that's been making the rounds on the Internet a bit: A Corgi falling down some stairs. 





 

 

 

Making the Villain Part One: The Archetypes

A conversation with a friend of mine had started like this

Friend: How long is Moonlight Sonata?
Me: Huh?
Friend: The song, how long is it originally?
Me: I didn't even know it was a song, I thought you were talking about a JRPG
Friend: BLASPHEMOUS
Me: Ahhh, I'm not very musically cultured
Me: I do enjoy the occasional classical piece, though, but only when I'm cutting people's fingers off.
Me: I'd be that type of badguy, I'd listen to lovely pieces of music while doing horrible things

For those of you who are uncultured cavemen, like me, here is the song:

A lovely song, but really geared more towards verbally interrogating someone rather than outright cutting fingers off. It's more of a first attempt interrogate classical piece, where you throw chairs and scream a lot while the protagonist just sort of sits there and takes it in calmly, because he's badass like that. (This Post might explain a bit of how I listen and apply music to my weird imagination.)

Anyway, not long into the conversation I came up with the quote of "You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain." That's actually a pretty good one. We then began nerding it up, trying to remember where it originally came from. He was right in saying it was from the Batman movie The Dark Knight.



Sorry, were you expecting Christian Bale?

It's perhaps the most brilliant way that villains are made because they once used to stand for everything good in the world. It's even more satisfying if you see the actual protagonist of a series decline down the villain path (Dresden Files, I'm looking at you...salivating).

I started telling my friend about what kind of villain I'd be, everyone's probably done it at one point or another, however, he wasn't sure what kind of archetype villain he'd be. After giving it some thought I started to realize that villains are perhaps the most complex part of writing. You can have the best plot and characters, but it's all going to mean nothing if you don't have a great villain.

The villain is the cornerstone of the story, more so than even the hero: he provides the motivation for the plot, he is the driving force of the protagonist. Make the villain disappear and you've suddenly got just a bunch of people running around in a syrupy-sweet world typically geared toward women's escapist fantasy (while Meyer's Twilight may come to mind to a lot of you, I feel a more accurate representation would be Debora Geary's A Modern Witch.)

What is a villain though? I'll admit I'm rather weak in the villain-writing department, but I like to think I've got a sound grasp on the idea, and as long as you've got the concept of something down, usually honing the skill becomes much easier.

So, after a trip to TV Tropes (and excellent, if terribly distracting, resource for writers), we can begin. I'm just going to start with types of villains in this post, and then work down to some details in the next one.

Let's start with the largest: The villain who controls literally everything.

I don't mean just an area of land or a group of people. I mean every single thing from the clouds in the sky to the blades of grass on the lawn. In my opinion it's petty weak, since no single ruler can possibly oversee everything. It also means he's a character that has achieved everything there is to achieve. Think of a villain as that of a hero: No one wants a perfect hero who's perfect at doing everything. Just as no one wants a hero like that, no one wants a villain like that either.

Consider scaling in a little depending on the width of the story. Instead of everything in existence, he rules a planet (if you're doing a several-planet science fiction story), a dimensional plane, a kingdom, or a village. Heck, you could have the villain controlling nothing but a single building. If you want an "All controlling overlord" you have to ask yourself this: What is the whole world to the hero?

The hero, no matter how sappy and morally correct he is, isn't going to care about some crappy little town on the far side of the world. What starts the hero on his quest to overthrow the villain is when the villain starts messing with the hero's world. Even in Lord of the Rings, Sauron didn't control the entire world at the height of his power, just the area the heroes happened to stomp all over. At the end (of the book anyway) Saruman took over the Shire, and as a result the hobbits kicked his ass. Why? Not because he was going to take over the world by enslaving the Shire, but because the Shire was their home.

The villain can have complete control, yes, but you should consider what he has complete control of. Don't say "everything" because then readers are too busy rolling their eyes instead of reading. The villain should still have something left that he wants to achieve. "Squash the hero" is one achievement, but that's only because the hero rose up in the first place. "Take over the human realm so that I rule both it and the faerie realm" works, because now it's that villain motivation that caused the hero to get pissed off.

The godlike villain

Much like the villain who controls literally everything, but with much more ego. Both are practically one and the same. Consider rereading the above section.

The polite villain

This one is a personal favorite of mine, and can be tricky to pull off. He's evil, on some level, but also polite. He's the one that offers someone tea before interrogating someone because, well, it's just good manners. Some examples I've read are Loki from Thor and The Avengers, and Bane in The Dark Knight Rises (I haven't seen it, so I'm going to trust other people's opinion). Marcone and Nicodemus from The Dresden Files (it's becoming practically a requirement to read those before coming here), Jarlaxle from R.A. Salvatore's Legend of Drizzt series, Delores Umbridge from Harry Potter. There is at least one out there that you can think of, and I can almost guarantee that you thought to yourself "Whoa, he's awesome."

Now, the part of what makes the polite villain tricky is that you don't want him devolving into someone who's downright cheesy, or turning onto a goodie two-shoes. You also want to avoid him being polite to the point where it kills him. "I'll give you the first strike" or equivalent always has me groaning.

A polite villain shouldn't be so polite that he jeopardizes his entire mission of being evil.

The anti-villain

Another favorite that strays into polite villain territory. Not quite an outright villain, but evil enough that he's not an anti-hero. He is the gentleman rogue, the fallen hero, the lesser of evils. The evil that might, actually, be fighting evil in his own evil way. While the polite villain gets brownie points because his polite nature only serves to make his evil evil...er, the anti-villain is someone you want so badly to not die or even cross over and join the hero. Alas, he doesn't, and either the hero is forced to kill him in some manner, or he rides off into the metaphorical sunset. He's the Sandman in Spiderman 3, Magus in Chrono Trigger, Mr. House in Fallout: New Vegas, that guy who's name I can't remember in the game Prototype. If ever the main character is actually an outright villain (and not just an anti-hero), they're almost always the anti-villain.

The crazy evil villain

This one is probably the most complex, and therefore difficult. These are the villains that are probably the closest to doing evil for the sake of evil. Even so, people have reasons to do what they do, even if they are false or non-existent to anyone but themselves. This one is the least recomended unless you are already very experienced at writing, but also the one amateur writers throw into their writing to explain how the badguy is what he is. "Oh he kicks puppies because he's crazy. Crazy evil." That doesn't work.

A lot of what makes the crazy evil villain legit is that they typically lack empathy. They don't think what they're doing is wrong simply because there is no such thing as wrong in their minds. Voldemort from Harry Potter, Hexadecimal from Reboot, Sylar from Heroes (before the show started tanking from the writer's strike in season 2) and, perhaps the most obvious example, Hannibal Lecter himself.



Hilarious evil will not be discussed here.

To best reflect on villains, think about some of your favorite villains. Who are they? What is it about them that you love? That you love to hate? What was their crowning moment of badassery that made you go "Oh I love (to hate) this guy!" Think of several favorites, seeing a pattern?

What if you were an evil villain? What would your motivations be? The things you would want to accomplish? How would you go about it? What would you do to someone rising up to stop you? Even as a villain you'd have your limits, what would you be willing to do and not do?

Stay tuned for Making the Villain Part Two: The Villaining. Until then I encourage you to do some reading up Here on TV Tropes, though I warn you that the website is, in itself, evil as it sucks up a lot of your time as you roam from entry to entry to entry.

 

You have been warned.

 

 

The Voices in your Head

(And Other Things That Will Happen to You when You Become a Writer)

The Voices

Let's start with the voices. No, writers are not schizophrenic people who belong in strait-jackets.


...Probably

Every character in a story has a voice. When you read a book chances are you don't have the same voice for every character. You didn't read Hunger Games with Katniss having the same soft, feminine voice as Peeta (or is that supposed to be the other way around?)

If bread could talk it would have his sweet, honey-and-oats voice.

The same holds true for the people who write the dialogue, and I've read it numerous times by other writers, so I'm not the only one. Writers have character's voices in their heads all the time, running through dialogue, just speaking in general to get their type of personality down, heck sometimes they even argue with the writer.

Character: No, stop right there. I wouldn't do that.
Writer: What? No, you have to do this, For the plot's sake.
Character: I won't. I'm not that kind of person. Make someone else do it.
Writer: But you have to! Without it I've got a gaping hole in the story!
Character: Yes, but it wouldn't be me.
Writer: Ugh! Fine! I'll fix it.
Character: Thank you.
Writer: Jerk.

At the same time, this can also explain how, in more poorly-written stories, all the character's dialogue sounds the same. In the writer's head, they all have different voices. Sometimes you have to stand back, remove the voice from the dialogue, and see if you can still tell one character apart from another.

You Ruin Plots in Other Stories for Yourself

Chekhov's Guns, Red Herrings, Plot Holes, things of This caliber are always running through my head.

It really ruins things.

Since becoming a writer I've been able to not only spot Chekhov's Guns, but also when they will be employed. I can't turn my brain off, no matter how hard I try. As a writer your Suspension of Disbelief is not only shot, but dead and gathering flies. You hyper-analyze movies, books, everything. Take it apart, figure out how it works, and then when you try to put it back together so that the magic can work again, it doesn't. (Which is basically summed up by this comic.)


I tried looking up an image to represent Chekhov's Gun, but the
results were weird. so here's a picture of some Fennec Foxes.

That's just my theory though. Maybe it's not because I'm a writer. It could be because I'm all grown up now, or because books and movies are all starting to become the same thing churned out over and over, or I'm just particularly jaded. Seriously, it would be like trying to watch The Sixth Sense and feel the same surprise at the twist ending that you did the first time (which, actually, I had figured out early on, thus ruining it anyway)
Still, I have to admit that I don't always see something coming. So that when it does, it always gets me in a big way. That, combined with being a writer, definitely makes ruining stuff for me worth it.

You Run with Every Stupid Little Idea


I'm sitting on a toilet.



A toilet that only a rich, successful novelist can afford.

Bam, an angel bursts through the window and tells me I have to save the world before whisking me away. He's actually kind of cute.
I'm eating at a restaurant.

Bam, the incarnation of Death sits down at my table and tells me I have a week to live. He's actually kind of cute.

I'm cooking dinner.

Bam, someone breaks into my house and my immaterial lifestyle, combined with my apathetic attitude toward life at the sight of his gun, causes the housebreaker to stop and think about what he's doing. He's actually kind of cute.

Every little thought that runs though my head is like a little piece of snow that rolls down a mountain, gathering more as it goes and, before I know it, I've got at least a ten-thousand word story in my head. Sometimes they get discarded, sometimes they keep nagging at me until I pause at the story I was working on to crank a first draft of this one out so that it will finally leave me alone or, at least, stop nagging me as badly.

Everything has Inspiration

Much like the previous statement, everywhere can give you an idea. Not just places, either. I think the first sprouting thoughts of Dusted came from the grocery store line. I had sort of let my eyes glaze over and was listening to the sounds of the checkstands. They'd recently updated some of the machines, but the problem was that now all the boop! sounds had varying tones. It sounded like a game of Pong. Who thinks of videogames? Kids. I looked around and someone was buying bean dip and a couple of other items.

What if...

What if there were kids, buying bean dip, and one of them was thinking about how all the busy register noises sounded like a game of Pong?

It eventually coalesced into a story about an underground rebel group that formed after videogames were banned (and actually was going to play out a lot like Cory Doctorow's Little Brother.) I never got a single word into the story, but it does surface in my brain from time to time. Anyway, the point is: I got an entire story started from the noises of an item being dragged across a scanner at a grocery store.


STOP GIVING ME INSPIRATION!

Being a writer is more than writing. It's more than even planning and researching and publishing and selling books. It's like an entire rewiring of every sense of your brain. A blessing and a curse. When a computer-programmer looks at a hairbrush he sees nothing. When a stylist sees a line of C++ she sees a blob of letters on a screen. When a writer looks at either one he's got voices in his head and worlds and plots and ideas.

So maybe that strait-jacket idea isn't too far off.

Quick Cold Days Update!

Okay, so some quick news about my predicament with Cold Days (for what happened, you can read it  Here)



Me.
 

So my Mom got me a new copy of Cold Days, even going as far as to get me another autographed copy (I must have been crying even nerdier than I thought). It came in the mail today. I was excited, but also sort of distrusting of the book. I'm sort of a pessimistic person anyway, so I paged through the entirety of my second copy of Cold Days and looking at every single page.

Sigh. Guess who's getting a third copy of Cold Days at some point.

That's right. I now not only have one autographed copy that's missing pages, but two copies of Cold Days that are now missing pages.

Except one copy is missing pages 217-249 and the other is missing 377-408.

I'm looking on the bright side though: It could have been worse. I could have had the missing 377-408 and been way more pissed because I was further into the story. Also, best of all, I actually get to finish the story, using the power of both books.

By your powers combined I am Captain Planet a readable copy of Cold Days!!!

Killing Off a Character (Writing)

It's been a while since I've written about, well, writing itself, and this is a subject I've planned to write (I have a "to write" list). This one, more than anything else I probably say about writing, should tell you a bit of how crazy writers really are (except for maybe the character's voices in our head.)

Early on I did quite a bit of reading about how to write stories, absorbing all of it like a sponge. I treated each piece of advice like it was holy, until I came across contradictory information, then picked whichever made more sense. After a while I began to form my own rules and ideas, and studied what worked well in published novels.

However, the only information I came across about killing off characters was somewhat wrong to begin with, and I've never come across anything since. I can't remember where it came from, or from who, but it said something along the lines of "If your story starts to get boring, kill someone off!"

At the time I was writing a (rather terrible) story and there was one character in particular that was getting on my nerves. She was supposed to be the main character's best friend, but she didn't have much of a personality, nor did I have an easy time making one for her. Basically I had forced her to exist simply because my story's fellowship was all guys with the exception of the main character.


Picture the guy in red with long, flowing blonde hair and that would be it.

So, when my story started to slow down, I thought of killing off the main character's girl friend numerous times. Squash her like an insect. Something was bothering me about it though. It felt too cheap, too easy, and my characters would have to emo about it for a long time. The death would mean nothing to me and, as a result, it would mean nothing to the reader.


The plot needed spicing up, so, yeah sorry...

I've participated in a collaborative writing forum for about 8 years now and one of the hardest things is killing off a character. I couldn't do it, even if it was planned from the very beginning. It would always be a faked death, or they would be reincarnated in some form, or a ghost. I've come up with some pretty inventive ideas in my stubborn "refuse to let a character die." Things that actually manage to create more plot than if the character had stayed dead in the first place.

It would be years later that I would be working on a story and trying to come up with an end. It's still in the process of being written, and will likely be published soon(ish), so I won't spoil you about the details of how it goes down exactly nor in what story, so I'm going to keep it vague.

I had reached a point where I began to think about how it would end. I can't stand "Happily Ever After" where everything is wrapped up nice and neat, especially in love. Love is weird, love is complicated, and love never comes out the way a person expects.

So, how to go about the end of this story? This story where these two people want to live happily ever after, but because of certain events, it is taken away from them?

I ran through several scenarios. Heck, I wrote out several scenarios. I primarily had one idea planned out: He rides out into the sunset. The question was, what happened then? Ideas: He left and came back a couple of years later, and she was waiting dutifully for him. He left and came back a couple of years later, and she had fallen in love with someone else in his absence. He left and never came back, and she waited dutifully for him for the rest of her life. I wrote all of those out, and about a week later it hit me:

He dies.

The thought hit me so hard, and so powerfully, that I just thought to myself "That's it. That's how it ends." The problem was, I didn't want it to end that way, but because it had hit me like that, in a way that it made me actually feel, I knew that would be the way it ended.

It was hard, writing that end. I wanted to cry. The only thing that kept me going was the potential embarrassment that my brother would see me typing away and crying my eyes out at the same time. Still, for the very first time, I actually cared about killing someone.


Between the keys is a combination of Doritos and tears.

So there it is, my advice about killing off a character: It has to be strong. You have to care about this character enough that you probably don't actually want them to die so that, when he does, you're going to feel it. Chances are, if you feel it, the readers will, too.

Killing someone off is tricky business. You have to both make the reader think they won't be killed off, while at the same time make it believable that their life is in enough danger so that they risk being killed off.

That's where killing minor characters, or even faceless extras, come into play.
Killing someone off has to be a shock, something that makes the reader go "Whoa," because they didn't see it coming. People like to be surprised, and when they are, it makes the story memorable.

However, there will be times that the character will be in danger, an action scene, and you need people to believe that they can be killed. Or, at least, in danger of being in harm's way. You have to really get a reader so into a story that they're going to be too distracted by the danger to notice that there's still half a book left that the character has to survive through.

That's when you kill other characters. If there's death around then it makes it believable that Something Bad could happen. They don't all have to be super significant deaths, because then readers aren't going to get attached in the event that the character they like inevitably dies (I'm looking at you, George R. R. Martin.) Instead, have some other characters die. Show that the robed spectre of Death actually exists in your story.


Maybe not literally.

Of course, there is also another layer of complexity: How do you make a possible main character death threat convincing? Especially when there's half a book left or, even harder, it's a first-person perspective. First person practically guarantees that the main character is immortal. How do you get around that?

I'll tell you when I figure it out, myself.

This actually reminds me of a good writing book I have called How Not to Write a Novel and it has the single, most useful section in it called Why Your Job is Harder than God's. Basically it talks about how, in writing, everything has to make sense, everything happens for a reason, all that stuff. In real life, there are characters and plot lines that sometimes never wrap up.

Picture someone writing in a diary, every single day, in real life. They're the first person perspective narrator of their own plot. Thirty years in? Bam. Fatal car accident. The End.

In fiction? They're a ghost, or the real main character finds and reads their diary, or you've got some kind of Nicholas Sparks love story going on, or something.

I seriously have no idea if this is applicable.
I have neither seen nor read anything by Nicholas Sparks,
and I am a manlier person for it.

Basically, when it comes to killing off characters, it's a very fine-point complicated thing. You know. Just like everything else in writing.

Are you crazy yet?







When Life Gives you an Orange with a Lemon Slice in it

...Seriously, what do you do with it?

So, you should know by the time and dates that Dusted Glen runs on a schedule. I write up the posts and, on a good day, manage to have a backlog of them an entire month ahead of schedule, but sometimes stuff happens that just can't be so neatly scheduled.

Take Cold Days for example (You should know by now that I'm a huge fan of the Dresden Files series.)

Cold Days was released on the 27th of November, and I wrote up a post ahead of time announcing the release. What I didn't tell you was that I preordered the book, and not just any edition, I got the Limited Edition Signed Copy of Cold Days (though it's sold out, you can see it Here.)


It just got real, yo

For my brother's recent birthday I had preordered a comic book that was released on the 13th. His birthday, meanwhile, was the 14th. I wasn't expecting it to be so hastily portal'd and cannon-shot through the wall of my house and into my lap in one day, but that's what happened. On the 14th it arrived in the mail, exactly like I had fantasized about.



I have boring fantasies.

So, after such a great turnout I waited for a similar experience with Cold Days. The 27th of November rolled around and my super-excited blog post went with it. That's fine, I can wait until the 28th. The autographed copy was going to be sweet. I would have a token of awesomeness from the best writer who wrote the awesomest story.

 

 

So I waited.

 

 

 

 

And waited.

 

 

 

 

And waited.

 

 

 

Finally, after the six and a half minutes of watching these videos, I decided to check the shipping information (in all seriousness it was about 3-4 days.)

 

They hadn't even shipped it yet.
 

So let's go ahead and borrow from this guy and use the Hulk-O-Meter:



In reverse it's about a green guy who slowly gets nerdier.

 

So I'd have to say I'm at Hulk-O-Meter Level 1. I'm not exactly David Banner, but I'm pretty in check. Sure, there are people reading Cold Days and have probably even finished it at this point. If I couldn't wait I could have easily run down to Barnes and Noble and picked up a copy on release day. Still though, I'm okay with it because I'm not just getting any old copy of Cold Days, I'm getting an Autographed First Edition copy of Cold Days from the God of Awesome himself.



So I wait, and wait and wait.

I ran out of time-lapse videos, so here's a picture of Chris Hemsworth.

Finally. Finally!

...Barnes and Noble tells me it's shipping.

And it'll be here the 4th of December.

What? Bullcrap! That's an entire week after the actual release date!

It's okay, it's okay. Autographed copy. Awesome author. I'm at Hulk-O-Meter Level Two because of the wait, but I can breeze through it reading other books, which I do.

 All at record speed, I might add.

We end up going out Monday, and when I'm picking up coffee at a bookstore for my dad I see this:

Copies and copies and copies of it.

Blarg!

 

Hulk-O-Meter Level Three attained!

But suddenly: Chai latte.



My mantra: Autographed copy, awesome, coming tomorrow. I resist the urge, get home, and find a nondescript box waiting for me: It arrived a day early. I'm David Banner on the Hulk-O-Meter

I pet it, hold it, look at it, open the book and see the autograph. It looks printed on the page, but after some hard looking I see where it's actually been written, by hand, because it faintly shows up on the page behind it. Hot damn, I don't even care who autographed it. It could be a drunk homeless man Jim Butcher paid to sign 500 copies, doesn't matter, it's my signed copy of Cold Days.



Which might explain why it said "Jim Beam" instead.

I don't get much time to read it for the first two days. but come Wednesday I devour it. It's everything I ever wanted, and more. I'm sitting down, planning to spent the last half hour of Tuesday reading. Man, Thomas is awesome, good thing they got rid of Molly too. Oh hey, there wasn't morning fog, something's about to happ-

...Wait, what?

Did I read something wrong?

No...

What's this? The page numbers are off.

They're repeating from previous pages. It jumps from page 216 back to 185.

How long does this go for?

Up to page 216 again and then resumes its normal program at 249.

I'm missing 31 to 33 pages...

In my book.

In my autographed book.

In my autographed book that I can't finish because it's missing PAGES!!!

 

SMASH!!!

 

READER SMASH!!!

 

ANGRY READER SMASH!!!

 

I sat down at my computer, tried looking up information about it, and got only one person reviewing the book saying they had an autographed copy with the same problem of missing pages.
 

"I paid extra money for the limited signed edition, and my copy ended up having a printing error. Pages 345-376 are repeated twice, and then the book skips to page 409. It is completely missing pages 377-408. I feel like I wasted my money, and it was very frustrating to get to that point in the book and then have to stop reading because of the missing pages."

 

After that, I kid you not, this happened:

 

 

Reader cry!

 

I tried to hold it together and be a Big Girl, I really did. I might have been able to if just a week earlier my copy of Walking Dead Volume 17 had the same exact problem, though probably not. This was Harry Dresden. This was my autographed copy of Cold Days. So, yeah, I cried.
 

...A lot.
 

A lot more than every other fan combined, probably.
 

Very well aware how much of a nerd I am.

 

I can't even order a new autographed copy of Cold Days because it's sold out. I can't get a replacement because, like, is Jim Butcher going to run around an replace everyone's signed copy? Bad enough that he's in the hospital (probably infected by a disgruntled reader with missing book pages.)
 

I guess I'll hang onto my autographed copy. Maybe all of the readers with 31 missing pages have to get together and fuse their extra pages into some kind of Sacred Tome of Dresden that opens a portal into Chicago.

 

Not a special alternate reality, just Chicago.

 



Boring fantasies, remember?

The Shield Bracelet

This is pretty much what I look like when I read the series.

Another, more recent project idea I've had similar to the Keeper Necklace is the Shield Bracelet. If you've read my post about The Dresden Files series [Here] then you should know by now I'm a big fan.

Probably one of  the most iconic things Harry Dresden has in his arsenal of magical equipment is his shield bracelet. I've been sorta-kinda-not-really been working on a Harry Dresden costume.

Still, I have wanted to make a shield bracelet. I'm not much into bracelets, but this I would wear, if I had it, and giggle to myself at the sheer awesomeness of it. Plus, it's super simple, right? Just get a chain, a couple of shields, and slap them all together.

So then, why can't I find any shields?

Looking for anything related to "jewelry" and "shield" pretty much comes up with a coating you put on your jewelry to shield it (go figure). Narrowing my search by adding "charm" or "pendant" or anything like that I tend to get shields that have pictures in them, or words, or Harley Davidson. Until I started my search I had no idea how hard it would be to find some plain, ordinary shield charms. Anything that I do find that comes close is often $50, which would work if I wanted one, but I want anywhere from five to eight of them, and that starts to really hurt.


Want want want want want

Not all is lost, though, in my fruitless search for the perfect shield I did happen to come across this little drool-worthy beauty found [Here]. Seriously, the link is worth checking out, even if it is just to see the "Customers Also Viewed" section. Apparently I'm not the only Dresden Files fan looking to make a costume of a totally obscure character (It's like everyone knows Harry Potter, but only readers know The Dresden Files. Everyone knows Halo, but only gamers know Metroid.)

Sometimes, with projects like this, you have to keep them on the back burner until you find exactly what you're looking for. Out of all my projects it does really show what's so exciting about making jewelry. It's more than just slapping a dangley thing onto a chain and then running around with it on. It's about finding the perfect charm, putting it together with other perfect pieces, and seeing the hard work and intricate detail you've put into a piece come to fruition.

And really, hey, shield bracelets are awesome.




The Keeper Necklace (and a jewelry tip)

Along with my brother's Satyr costume I have some smaller project ideas which have mostly been in the pipe-dream stage because the materials are limited. One I've had in mind for a long time is what I call the Keeper Necklace.



Why I'm a kleptomaniac now

You probably know by now that I'm a huge nerd, and I'm a nerd to a very detailed degree. I like to express my love of a fandom in very small, unnoticeable ways.

Thief 2: The Metal Age was one of the finest games to ever exist (as I mentioned in an earlier post) and I've always wanted some kind of way to express my love for the game other than breaking into people's houses and lifting them of all their valuables (I gave up when no one lit their house with torches and I broke both my legs trying to climb a rope arrow.)

In the game is a group called the Keepers, they're a secretive organization that taught Garrett (the game's protagonist) the skills of stealth. They have massive libraries of information and generally run around in the dark with cloaks on. All of which make them my favorite of all the warring factions in the series.


Rainbows and hearts and happy! *barf*

Because their symbol is a keyhole I wanted some kind of keyhole charm to wear as a necklace. The problem with finding such a thing isn't very popular. Though thanks to Steampunk, there has been more of an interest and I have often been finding locks paired up with keys or else in the shape of a heart.



Awesome: all summed up in one symbol

I'm pretty picky about what I want. What I want is a plain, ordinary keyhole, but all I can really find are keyholes in locks. I was lucky to find a keyhole charm online, but I have yet to actually acquire one in some manner.

Last time I was out, however, I struck project gold: A whole set of locks with keyholes not in the shape of diabetes-inducing hearts (of which Wilford Brimley strongly suggests against wearing)


If you're as turned on by locks
as I am, seek help.

Just do what the man says.

So now I've got a bit of a problem. What do I do with all of these locks? I was thinking of making the silver ones into a matching necklace and earrings pair, but I don't know if I have the right kind of matching metal for jump rings or chain. I have absolutely no idea what to do with the brassy lock on the top, and I'm hesitant to make the bronze-type ones on the right into earrings because the earring hooks I have that would match, while comfortable, eventually start turning green.



Oh no she di'n't! Gurl, hold mah earrings.

Which brings me to my tip. The human body is a very interesting thing, and one part in particular that fascinates me is the acidity of the oils on our skin. Now, it's not acidic on Xenomorph-blood levels, but it does start to wear things down after awhile. I've had the same keyboard for about 15 years. I'm pretty stubborn about it because it's the only one I'm comfortable using. Anytime I get a new one it's about a week before I'm back to it. On the lesser-used keys you can actually feel the grain of the lettering on it (I'm feeling up my Print Screen button and it's pretty obvious) and, because I am a serious PC gamer, I'm pretty sure you can guess which 4 keys are smooth and faded. That's right: J, Q, Z and Num Lock. In all seriousness WASD are my best friends, with E, C and V coming in second place.

Now, what point am I trying to get across? First, I'm stubborn about keyboards, and second, that's just a keyboard. With jewelry, it's going to be something you have against your skin all the time. Unless you have something like gold, which doesn't react to a lot of things, your skin is going to eat your jewelry eventually.

For earring hooks I can't offer much advice other than buy quality, I suggest Blue Moon Beads. They're affordable, and I haven't had any problems with them other than the occasional weirdly manufactured hook in a package full of them.

For necklaces, it's much easier. I made a cross necklace for a friend but, after a couple of weeks, her skin had eaten the backside of it. I don't wear necklaces very often, so I was surprised. Luckily I had come across something forever ago that had suggested painting a thin layer of clear nail polish on it. I haven't tried it myself, and I never heard any news of her results, so she either never tried it or it didn't work. Either way, I suspect I might find myself trying it on my lock necklace one of these days.

But first, I have to make it.