Letting the Monster Out

Recently, Charles expressed his disappointment in a story he read. The lead character (name of Edge), a cold-eyed killer (and borderline psychopath) now retired, spends most of the book trying to stay out of trouble. Until, of course, it's time to strap on his guns again.

The formula is tried and true. Shane. Pale Rider. Unforgiven. Sin City: A Dame to Kill For. The Big Boss. Hell, the true story of Cincinnatus. One of drama's favorite 'guns on the mantelpiece' is the bad-ass who's trying to hold back.

The book Charles read didn't work, and I thought I knew why. The hero's arc failed in two places: the start and the end.

Drama is about contrast. No matter what genre, the hero or heroine ends the story in a very different place from where they started. Bridget Jones starts her story miserable, alone and embarrassed at the turkey curry buffet, and she ends the next Christmas happy, in love and immune to anything her mother might say. We meet Harry Potter unloved, disregarded and the absolute bottom of the heap, positively hated by his adoptive parents and living in a cupboard under the stairs. By the end of that first story, he is the hero of his school, loved by all. Othello, on the other hand, starts his story a celebrated hero, saviour of the city with the most beautiful woman he's ever seen for his bride. By the end, both he and Desdemona are dead by his own hand.

Rule of thumb: the lower the hero starts, the higher he'll end up. Or vice versa. Sometimes, it can be both. The detective may end the story with all the answers and his life in ruins. All I'm saying, there's a reason you see a lot more rags-to-riches stories than rags-to-lower middle class.

Back to the Retired Gunslinger. This character always starts as a bad-ass held in check. Always.

Shane and the Preacher (the Mysterious Stranger in Pale Rider) are both introduced fronting off groups of thugs with little more than an icy glare and a palpable sense of menace. How do we know they're bad-asses? Groups of asshole bullies take one look at them and run away.

Chen (Bruce Lee's character in The Big Boss) and Dwight from A Dame to Kill For show the natures they're hiding in action. When Chen's cousins end up in a fight, Bruce Lee uses grace, skill and a deft comic touch to show us that he really could've whupped those bullies butts the whole time, only he promised his momma he wouldn't fight. Dwight stops an attempted murder with a single knockout blow, and his voiceover tells us directly how much he enjoys it, how tempting it is to 'let the monster out'. We soon learn he no longer drinks, smokes, won't even let himself exceed the speed limit for fear he'll turn that monster inside him loose.

Remember: the Retired Gunfighter is *not* a changed man. He may think he is. He may argue that he is, act like he is, do everything he believes a changed man would do. But *we* need to see that old Monster still lurking under his skin, sniffing the air and waiting for a chance to slip its chain.

We need to see that no matter how much the Retired Gunfighter might lie to himself, whatever it might cost him, part of him wants that monster loose.

And when our hero does finally let that monster out, WATCH OUT! We've watched our hero suffer through three-quarters of the story resisting his natural urges. His half-measure compromises have failed: the monster inside gloated and the villains still won. In the end, there's nothing left for it but to cut loose.

And here's the thing about cutting loose: you've gotta go big. BIG!

Shane guns down the hired killer, the ranch boss and everyone else in the saloon that night. Preacher blows up a strip-mine and wipes out the villain's whole gang. Dwight comes back with a brand new face, a duffel bag full of explosives, a ninja accomplice and a .25 automatic tucked up his sleeve. And in The Big Boss, Bruce Lee stabs the local drug lord to death with his own fingers.

Big.

I'm thinking this is why the book Charles read failed. The killer, Edge, starts out pretty whimpy (okay, cool), but he goes wrong in one important way. Maybe more: I don't know if we get to see what total bad-assery he's holding back, or if we get a sense for how very badly he wants to let that beast free. But I do know this: he carries his gun with him in a carpet bag.

To me, that's a fatal flaw.

And when the rough stuff does start again, he emerges quite a bit less violent than he used to be, with a greater regard for law and order. Wtf?

I call it 'muted arc', or rags-to-lower middle class: the character's changes simply aren't big enough. By keeping his pistol nearby (though not on his hip), Edge is making a definite statement. Contrast it with Preacher in the Pale Rider, who needs days of hard riding to reach the steel box where he's locked away his guns.

And Shane, Preacher, Chen, Dwight, any Retired Gunslinger you can think of, all give us a sense that their violence at the end is worse than they ever were back in their bad old days. They may suffer for unleashing their violence (Shane is badly wounded, maybe fatally. Chen goes to prison.), or they may simply have to live with this poisonous knowledge about themselves.

No way should it actually be better. Shane can't strap on his guns, give the hired killer a flesh wound and have the ranch owner surrender without further bloodshed. And then go off with the lesson that the answer is moderate amounts of violence...

Home

The tabby adopted us gradually. The latest Secret Headquarters has a cat door, so it was no surprise that at least a few li'l folks around the neighborhood use the Secret Headquarters as a Midnight Snack Bar. Only one was brave enough to raid the food bowls while the People were still awake.

Every now and then we'd catch a dark and tawny glimpse of our little raider. At first, any eye contact, the slightest movement, and the little stranger was gone. By slow, painful degrees, he learned that no one here meant him any harm. He also learned that breakfast is a fine meal for Midge and Butler, and that three dishes could go out as easily as two.

Before I knew it, he was sleeping in the house at night. One morning, bribed with fresh fish, he let me pet him. For maybe three seconds.

Did he have a home? Did anyone miss him? If he didn't have another family, where did he go when he left? Was I taking in a stray or stealing someone's beloved pet? I gave the little fellah the freedom of the house, long as he played nice with the others. As it happened, he was pretty mellow and played well with others. (Not 'played' the way Butler does-- I once saw him scare the hell out of a German Shepherd-- but you know, nicely.)

We got used to having the little guy around. Still not officially part of the household, he didn't have a name. I called him Tabby Cat, Buddy, Little Man.

One night he didn't show up for bedtime. The next morning, he wasn't at breakfast. No sign of him all the next day. I told myself he'd gone back to his 'other family', that it was just as well we hadn't named him anyway.

It was cold that night, the rain like ice. I heard the cat flap and ran to open the lounge door. Nothing. I moved further down the dark hallway. Wet fur brushed my leg in passing. My little buddy was home.

And limping. His right front paw was in bad shape, and one side of his face was covered in blood. He'd been hit by a car. I don't know how far he traveled to make it back to the house, but he curled up in the cat bed in front of the fire and passed out. I stroked his flank and prayed he'd live through the night.

I knew then he was our cat. That this really was his home.

The next morning, the receptionist at the vet's asked for his name. For the first time, I had an answer.

"His name is Buddy."


Update: Buddy is well on the mend, now only favoring his paw when he wants an extra helping of wet food or a warm lap made available. That's right-- he's gone from spooking at every movement to deciding that laps are great places to sit!

Growling

After a week without the net, I have finally convinced the 'technicians' that no, turning off the modem and turning it back on will not fix the problem and that, yes, the fault is in fact at their end of spaghetti wires.

Meantime, I have resorted to piracy, plundering an unsecured network that turns itself on and off at (to me) random. Dicey, at best.

The 'technicians' tell me my slick and lovely home wireless will be back up and running by tomorrow. Of course, they've been saying this all week...

Can't wait to get back to checking up on blogs.

I call Shenanigans

Girl asks for 3 stars, wakes up with 56.

Fell asleep?! Are you *kidding* me?

Now, I've never tattooed anyone's face, but I do live in the land of Moko, have talked with clients who've had cosmetic tattooing done and seen a couple of guys get their heads tattooed above the hairline. Those guys were pretty tough characters, and they were in absolute AGONY when the tattooist got near their temples. Cosmetic tattooing is usually done with topical anesthetic. Ta Moko was, among many other things, a way of showing you could take some serious pain.

Somehow, I doubt this young lady 'slept through' what looks like an hour or two worth of work. The forehead and brow ridge, maybe the cheek and jaw I could buy, but the soft tissue under the eye?! The side of her nose?! If she's got something that let her sleep through that, I'd love to have a little for when I get my ribs finished...

And hand-drawn or stenciled, you might think she'd have noticed the design kind of, you know, 'going large'. Unless she was supposed to have slept through that, too. Bloody ridiculous!

Kimberley Vlamink isn't actually the one making me mad here. Young kid had what probably seemed like a pretty good idea at the time, that turned out to be pretty f**king stupid at the end of the day. Fine, we've all been there. Instead of fronting up, she spun out a threadbare version of 'I didn't know; an older boy made me do it'. Didn't work for me when I was eight and me and my friends got caught with our first Playboy, but then I'm guessing Kimberley's dad is a hell of a lot more gullible than my mom.

I'm pretty disappointed in her dad, both for buying that fib and for trying to cash in on it (though 10,000GBP might just be what tattoo removal costs there, I don't know. I'm very damn disappointed in the ass-clown who did the work, but look at the photo. What can you expect.

Mostly, I'm steamed-up at the glee with which this story has run across the news. It was a top story on Google and Yahoo's news services, and a 'find out tonight' teaser on my local news. I assume it's popping up in your local markets too-- Never fall asleep in a tattoo parlour (our local newscaster's words) has all the stuff of urban legend. I've seen so much glee at the idea that a tattooist might run amok on a helpless victim that very few reporters seem the least bit interested in asking if it's even possible.

One way to do a little fact-checking: see if Kimberley manages to sleep through the laser treatments. And if she does, I'd love it if she'd share whatever she's on. You see, over the next few months I'm hoping to finish my ribs...

Top Ten

So I was reading Alexandra Sokoloff's great series of columns on story structure. Her first word of advice is to put together a list of your ten favorite works in your chosen genre, or just your ten favorites altogether.

I haven't done my genre-specific favorite list, but I *did* sit down and write a list of ten books and/or movies I wish I'd written. I was surprised at some of my results:

High Noon (for my money, this movie is the most tightly-crafted thriller ever!)

Prayers for Rain (Dennis Lehane's prose has never been more haunting)

Shotgun Opera (Victor Gischler writes crisp, fast, sharp and vivid)

The Bottoms (Joe Lansdale's literary mystery stacks up against anything else I've ever read)

Coraline (something about the whimsy and magic in Gaiman's world...)

Silence of the Lambs (the movie, not the book-- oddly)

Strega (Andrew Vachss's second novel gave us a femme fatale who still haunts my idle nightmares)

Long Lavender Look (why THIS John D. MacDonald and not another, I'm at a loss to say. All the same, I stand by it.)

Fargo (a haunting, beautiful, grim and funny movie, and a story structure that ties my head in knots!)

The Crow (I just wish to hell I'd written this movie, okay?)

Certain readers might be surprised to see a few of my favorite authors missing. James M. Cain and Gil Brewer both wrote a hell of a story, but as much as their doomed heroes resonate with me, I don't wish I'd written them. Same is true in the other direction for Robert A. Heinlein, JK Rowling and Marian Keyes.

The exercise was also enlightening. Thomas Harris lost out to Ted Tally (writer of the screenplay for Silence of the Lambs) for two reasons: one was the tighter structure and visual system of the movie, and the other was that the movie flirts with the seductiveness of evil without ever rolling over and showing its belly to the darkness. Harris is WAY too enamored of the dark side for me.

One thing I'm still puzzling over is the absence of James Lee Burke. I mean, I LOVE the guy's fiction, would be proud to call any of his books my own, but after three days of working on that list, nothing of his made the cut.

I've got two theories. 1) I'm more in love with the overall body of work than with any single book, or 2) I'm just too intimidated to even list him.

So how bout y'all? What do you wish you'd written?

Visual artists and musicians, you can do this exercise in your chosen mediums too. Perhaps sometime I'll mention paintings or tattoos I wish I'd done....

Aw, Hell

DOn't know what to say, really...

Junky - Chasing That High

Addiction is strange. At its heart is the pleasure released when opiate chemicals flood the brain. Addicts' brains have certain chemistries in common, even though their pleasure-triggers can take many, sometimes weird forms. It seems strange to me that moments of pleasure can create lifetimes of damnation.

Most of us cross that dark threshhold in a rush of warmth and light. We spend the rest of our lives comparing every dull moment, every blunted, habituated high, to those early, golden days when the high was still new.

For me, it started with Batman comics. Spiderman and the X-Men figured in there too. And Wonder Woman, who woke other, darker pleasures in my four year old breast.

Once I learned to read, I moved on to harder drugs. The way a heroin addict can tell you about their first really good high, or a hard-core alcoholic remembers the early days when every beer was his friend, I remember a book called Splinter in the Mind's Eye, by Alan Dean Foster. And Octagon House, by Andre Norton.

Those were the first books that really shook me. The ones that made the life outside go away, that cut me to the bone, that gave me that rush.

Today, I'm still chasing that rush. Trouble is, same as the drinker, the junkie, the problem gambler all habituate to their highs, I can't get that same rush in the places I used to. I get pleasure, sure. Quite a lot of pleasure.

But what I'm looking for is that serious, major, insane high. That up-all-night-call-in-sick-the-next-day-because-I-can't-close-this-book high. There are a handful of places where I know I can go for it, but those bastards right so damned slow! And too many of them are dead.

I've just finished Gone Tomorrow by Lee Child, Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson and COld Flat Junction by Martha Grimes. Mighty fine, all of them, but none cut too deep. Today I'm returning to James M. Cain and Joe Lansdale's masterpiece, The Bottoms. The Tiny Dynamo is flying through the Harry Potters once again.

A little more leather and a little less bathing, we could be a literary Sid and Nancy...


Check that apply:

___ I frequently (once or twice a day) find that my
   conversation centers on books or reading experiences.

___ I read to deal with tension or physical stress.

___ Most of my friends or acquaintances are people who read.

___ I have lost days of school/work because of reading.

___ I have had the shakes when going without a good book.

___ I regularly read upon awakening, before eating, or
   while at school/work.

___ I have been arrested for Driving while reading.

___ I have periods of time that can't be remembered while
   reading or buying books.

___ Family members think reading or book purchasing is a
  problem for me.

___ I have tried to quit reading but cannot.  (A good test
  is voluntarily going for six weeks without a good book
  and not experiencing physical or emotional distress.)

___ I often double up, reading two books at a time or
   regularly read more books than others.

___ I often read to "get ready" for a social occasion.

___ I regularly hide books and reading material from those
   close to me so that they will not know how much I am reading.

___ I often read by myself.

___ My reading or book buying has led to conflict with my friends
  or family members.

Three or four 'yeses', you may have a problem. Five, get thee to a counselor!

In fact, go anyway. They have *great* promotional literature....