Captain America 2, The Winter Soldier: Short, Controlled Bursts

It's a fucking snakeskin turban, people. And no, Mom,
 she doesn't "just look that way" and those aren't her real
cheekbones. Gah, we argued so much about this dumb movie.

It's always a kick in the pants when the Oscars come around. My degree is in cinema studies and working at a grocery store comics. This left me rather depressed, having read my living-the-dream, scriptwriting amigo's annual top ten list to discover I'd only heard of any of the films via a fashion blog I read and not seen a single one. I haven't seen any of the nominees this year, except (cough) Maleficent which is up for costume design. Arg.
through high school and college, I was ever so tapped in to Hollywood (and beyond). The steep drop in my consumption of film--at least current film--coincides quite noticeably with the absence of any disposable income to speak of. Ah, how culture eludes the impoverished! I graduated six years ago in the spring and I've reduced myself to what I can steal from the internet, my streaming-only Netflix subscription, and movies related to my chosen field,

Giving Me a Number, Taking Away My Name

More than the snobbish angst of having not enjoyed any high art at the multiplex this year--and that's being generous in assuming some was made, I'm a cynical snob--is that I have no brevity in my nature. My articles on Watchmen and The Hunger Games are more akin to essays, and between tracking down images, writing and editing, they took days of time to produce. This is a hurdle, more than a flaw, I'd say: It's the way I tend to rant articulately about my opinions to a few people, promise myself and others that I'll write down my thinking and then never do that is the real, real problem. But, since I'm a deli-slicer extraordinaire these days (we don't give out numbers, actually), I might as well do as Devo commands and get up off my ass.

I've Got One Hell of a Job

This is a challenge all writers face: Not writing and feeling bad about it. Let's remember to work with what we've got, draw inspiration from whatever truly does inspire us, and just keep trying to write it down. I did see some movies that were in release this year. I do have opinions about them, discerning critiques as a writer, a filmgoer and a scholar of the silver screen. Let's get nitty and gritty, let's think critically about mass-audience entertainment, let's commit to following through on our promise to ourselves and each other and elevate even the lowest common experiences to the level of intelligence befitting discourse! Or, at least let's delve into a very long exploration of Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier, like I fucking said I would when I saw it in April. Yeehaw!

After this point, there are mega-spoilers, not that I probably need to warn anyone about a movie this old and some triggering things like descriptions of violence. Oh, and hereafter, there will be no more references to "Secret Agent Man" by Devo, in part because Steve Rogers makes the worst secret agent ever.

The Clever Club

It's all over modern narrative: The practice of writing a long-form piece and making every single loose end tie in by the end, causing seemingly throwaway characters/plot lines to balloon into what-a-tweest surprises and/or forcing casual readers to flip back hundreds of pages to remind themselves of insignificant details which are now inflated with meaning. It's so endemic in a certain author's work, I call it Gaiman-ing. This is bad writing, for a number of reasons, but it's alluring as hell. In the process of creating my world for Soil, Ocean, Air, I found myself skirting this approach. Time to "Stop, breeeathe, think," as my mother (and Blue's Clues, I believe) would encourage.

I started grouping together the reasons why I crave such neat wrap-ups, but it turned out that they were all facets of one thing: Pay-off.

I get a little endorphin rush when I solve a puzzle. Doing so in a story with the fewest pieces possible feels economical and smart. Then I feel smart and I want to show it off.  "Wow," the throngs will cheer, "I totally see what you did there. That is so smart. I am in the Clever Club with you, Wirtz! What a great book!" Then they will do the thing I want most--more than reading my work once, they will read it again, now a little smugger because they are in the know. And then they will tell the people they know to read my book because they, like their dear author, will want their friends to join in the satisfaction with them. Gold!

Or is it?

The Challenges of Everything

I come to this particular revelation often: Anything can happen.

On the one hand, it's paralyzing. I find myself so overwhelmed with possibilities that I don't know which to choose. My mind burns twice as bright for half as long, and then goes dark.

On the other hand, what the hell kind of thing is that to complain about? Too many ideas? Bosh. The gut knows: Write, try, see how it feels.

My characters will tell me if it works or not. Recently, Arlo (from The Wide and Burning World) got angry. I wasn't expecting that to come of all those cycling directions, but it did. It was really comfortable. In fact, even though I never meant to go in that tract, I discovered that in order to keep him from being so angry, I'd need to undo a substantial amount of previous characterization. I'm rolling with it. Just keep rolling, that's the key. Because it only counts as written once it's wrote.

Never Ever

I just finished reading a webcomic (I'll save which and my feelings thereon for a review post) wherein the male lead risked getting shot in the head. It made a lot of sense, as far as I could tell as a first-time reader: It would have solved a lot of problems, in most of the characters' minds, and would have certainly punched up the action a bit.

Of course, he was the male lead, so as I read along and saw his defenseless head cradled in the female lead's arms, I knew that he was not going to be shot. There was, I assumed, going to be a twist where shooting him in the head no longer became a reasonable solution and lo, I witness swathes of exposition that explained this twist and made everything okay for the leads to have their lives and get married and all that. Happy ending.

Don't mistake me: I didn't really want him to get shot in the head. I thought the character was well-written and I was feeling girly enough that I was hoping for some more romance (although watching this particular illustrator stretch her wings and draw some gore--clearly something that doesn't interest her--would have been nice). I don't like twists for the sake of twists. And some of my stories have happy endings. I find tragedy interesting, but not, again, for its own sake.

But just so we're all clear, if I had been writing this story, I would have very seriously considered having my male lead get his brains blown everywhere. It's not like there wasn't a twist coming anyway, but predictability is beside the point. I wouldn't do it for shock value, or because it runs against what's expected (reactionism is just as deadly to the creative impulse as plot armour). I would do it because the man holding the gun believed it necessary.

My characters are never, ever safe. Not from each other, and certainly not from me.

If it makes the most sense in the story for something horrible to happen, for one of my characters to be cruel or cowardly or simply snuffed out while they're crossing the street, then it happens.

Yes, I put the gun in his hand, but then I asked him what he wanted to do with it. If he answers "Shoot that dandy in the head," I only have two options: Go back and find a way to take the gun out of his hand--make him a different man, in essence--or let him pull the trigger.