Reading: "Destroy and Revolution" by Kouji Mori - First Impressions

Last post I introduced a manga I just discovered, Destroy and Revolution, about two Japanese high-school boys in love — turned terrorist. Here are my first impressions:

1. Prediction: Karl Marx will not be mentioned once in this series. The Marxist revolutionary Leon Trotsky denouced individual terrorism as the substitution of individual terrorism for mass action, so he would not be impressed with these two. They'd remind him too much of the Socialist Revolutionaries who lost the 1905 Russian Revolution.
2. Kouji Mori's style is not pretty, even if Yuuki is. If there's any mangaka I'm familiar with that he resembles, it's Naoki Urasawa of Monster fame. I won't be surprised to find out he's a former Urasawa assistant, the same way Shotaro Ishinomori (Cyborg 009, Kamen Rider) was Osamu Tezuka's, or Tsutomu Nihei (Blame!) was Tsutomu Takahashi's (Jiraishin).
3. "Let's break it" is a line that absolutely begs to be referenced.
4. First mystery: who are the "unworthy" who are being purged?
5. Makoto is not actually ideological ("Both this ideology and the significance of it are still beyond my grasp"). He admits he's dumb. He's in this out of love for Yuuki. The relevant trope seems to be Love Makes You Evil — though "evil" (i.e. terrorism) isn't necessarily considered wrong in Mori's universe, unlike our understanding here in America, the most mercilessly Calvinist-Manichaean country in the West.
6. Correction of last post: the apartment block was under construction, and the Diet member being targeted owns it. There is a long-standing link between real estate and political corruption in Japan.
7. First flashback: Makoto Tanaka is an Ordinary High School Student repeating a grade. Yuuki is one of the most popular students at their school, with a reputation for arguing so hard with his teachers that he drives them all the way into retirement.
8. Second flashback: Makoto's father went bankrupt and committed suicide. The State then put Makoto into foster care. Sure enough, he was bullied. The same thing radicalized me.
9. Second mystery: what's with the hand, Makoto?
10. Popularity, fame, girls, and money are nothing to Yuuki. (To Shira they would be expedient means.) Especially money, "the most ridiculous creation human beings have ever made". He's an anti-capitalist. Sure enough, he violently attacks a school extortion ring two pages later, long distance, with a well-aimed brick. Is he inspired by Che Guevara, the most charismatic terrorist in history? He wouldn't be the least bit surprised at 2014 America. He already lives in Spanner's world. Prediction: he will say "bankster".
11. There are translation errors, of course. Even spelling errors. MangaReader is not a commercial publishing outfit.
12. Third mystery: who does Yuuki insist on hanging out with a misfit like Makoto and even saying "we're the same"? (Makoto looks at his right hand.)
13. Second mystery answered: Makoto's right hand contains (SPOILER!) amazing superpowers! Talk about ending with a bang! Believe it or not, Destroy and Revolution makes Spanner's identification of terrorism with superheroism the subject of the story!

And that takes care of Destroy and Revolution #1, "Our Resentment". As a good opening should, it sets up the story in a big way and asks questions that won't be answered until later episodes. Judging by the omake page, Mori's sympathies seem to be with our protagonists and especially Yuuki. The names themselves are telling: makoto means "truth" and yuuki means "courage". Note that the illustration on #1's last page is the Tarot card Death: an early version of that card contains the severed heads of the Pope and the Emperor, implying they got what they deserved (they're also falling from the Tower in the same deck). The revolutionary tale embedded in the Major Arcana by Cathars driven underground is closely related to "Jack the Giant Killer", which is structuring myth shared by both Destroy and Revolution and Chaos Angel Spanner. Here, Yuuki and/or Makoto is Jack, and the banksters are the giant.

So we have the yaoi Bonnie and Clyde, as terrorists, who might be right. Maybe. Terrorism's a tactic as dodgy as any a bankster would come up with.

While fixing dinner tonight (grilled cheese sandwiches, with sharp cheddar!), the idea came to me for a fanfic challenge: keep the plot of Destroy and Revolution but replace Yuuki and Makoto with:

1. Kaworu and Shinji from Neon Genesis Evangelion (and Makoto may have been directly inspired by Shinji);
2. Homura and Madoka from Puella Magi Madoka Magica;
3. Utena and Anthy from Revolutionary Girl Utena, adding actual revolution to that story;
4. Jessie and James from Pokémon's Team Rocket;

or your choice of iconic anime and videogame couples. If Shira and Leila are to be the terrorists in a Spanner alternate-universe fic, bonus points for referencing Bonnie and Clyde, double bonus for references to George Hayduke (possibly the original Spanner) and The Monkey Wrench Gang.

Anyway, back to editing...

True Love as Terrorism: "Destroy and Revolution" and "Spanner"

Destroy and Revolution by Kouji Mori is a manga about the sweet, sweet love story of two pretty Japanese boys — who just happen to be violent terrorists on a bombing rampage. Strangely enough, I only heard of it yesterday, while randomly surfing TV Tropes (it's on the "Ho Yay → Anime" page as the sole entry under "D"). Like Chaos Angel Spanner, it begins with a bang — with our titular heroes, brooding Makoto and charming Yuuki, destroying a high-rent apartment block in Tokyo for "the purification of the unworthy" (a corrupt politician in this case).

Like I said, I only heard of Destroy and Revolution yesterday. That means it could never have become an influence on Spanner, which I've been working on since 1992. Now consider this: in developing the relationship line for Spanner, I did this, in approximately this order:

1. I centered it on the story's two main girls.
2. I made their personalities volatile: brooding Leila, hot-blooded charmer Shira.
3. I put their love in direct opposition to a future fascist United State of Amerika.
4. I re-envisioned it on the Surrealist principle of l'amour fou or "mad love", which can lead to not just personal liberation but the destruction of society, thus making their love itself terroristic.

And even though the two stories developed completely in isolation from one another, Spanner uncannily resembles a yuri version or "distaff counterpart" of Destroy and Revolution, with a more sophisticated revolutionary ideology (which, admittedly, grew out of nearly 30 years of at least rebellious thinking). Also consider that Shira and Leila are only a couple years younger than Yuuki and Makoto. Now consider this scenario: Destroy and Revolution, starring Utena and Anthy from Revolutionary Girl Utena, working toward a real revolution, against Ozymandias from Watchmen. That's as close to a perfect description of Chaos Angel Spanner as you'll get in terms of other stories.

Adolescent love expressed as a passion for destruction. Too bad Destroy and Revolution came far too late to have any direct influence on Spanner. But you never know...

Spanner R4 Update: Chapter 4, Second Pass: The Novelization Part (With Bonus Chapter 5 Preview)

I know what I'm editing now. Second phase: adapting those parts of Chapter 4's Script Frenzy script version that I haven't adapted yet, plus completing scenes I didn't script but which remain unfinished. Here's the rundown:

1. Incomplete: the opening coffee shop scene before the shooting; the first two paragraphs are still in concept and not yet written.
2. Incomplete: the strategy conference for the Bangor High student tutors and their parents. The original outline and the Script Frenzy version are set at Mudlark House; for the revision, I'm moving it to the house of the Tachibana family from Chapters 1 and 5.
3. New: the scene where the future Team Bremelo scout Dictel Park and run into a Klown gang called the Baddd Boyzz near the old Dictel Corporation headquarters. The gang leader, Little Badd, and his chief enforcer, Big Baddd, will be a recurring menace throughout the School Arc.
4. New: what in the original outline was a funeral is now a gathering at Drusilla Becket's cult headquarters to determine who takes over Biotron Corporation now that its founding chairman Dr. Lars Thorwald is dead.
5. New: the scene at the Shelley family house to discuss how to extricate Leila from her arranged marriage to Oliver Thorwald, which remains enforceable by law despite the elder Thorwald's murder.

The hard part is, surprisingly enough, those first two paragraphs. The easy part is converting the new scenes from script to prose (and HTML). After that, I'll update the novelization to include changes made in the script version. The third phase, then, will be cutting the chapter down to size.

Meanwhile, here's a new scene for Chapter 5 that I thought up while walking the downtown streets right after posting yesterday's entry. This little scene says volumes about both episode villain Mark Bernkastel (the serial killer Shira saves Mimi from in Chapter 4, and the first homeroom teacher in the School Arc) and major villain Dick Becket, king of the Corporates and supreme guru of "Sado-Monetarism". Seems his sadism goes beyond even economics...

The scenario: just before Bernkastel sets out for Dictel Park to hunt our heroines, he calls the United Corporations chairman while he is having sex with the Shira clone he's having his kitchen staff fix for dinner that night (some Corporates like to eat clones of themselves as a delicacy, but their leader prefers to clone his female enemies and have sex with them before he eats them). The clone makes the expected sexual noises throughout the scene.

Bernkastel: Chairman! Shira Thomas is Spanner!
Becket: (irritably) What did I tell you about interrupting me, Bernkastel?
Bernkastel: But Chairman, this is urgent!
Becket: I'm busy, Bernkastel. Wait until I'm finished.
Bernkastel: What in Jesus America's name—
Becket: Are you a cocksman, Bernkastel?
Bernkastel: (surprised) What?
Becket: If you were a cocksman, Bernkastel, you wouldn't be going around killing women instead of conquering them. If you were a cocksman, you would have conquered Shira Thomas long ago. Am I clear?
Bernkastel: But—
Becket: You are as useless as ever, Bernkastel. Goodbye. [hangs up phone]

I've noticed how the Beckets can intimidate even the scariest villains: Drusilla and a theocrat in Chapter 1, Richard here, Henry pretty much anytime. And I haven't even gotten to Colonel Tom. As for making deals while having sex with the clone you're going to eat: that's an act of supervillainy in itself, and one of the most cyberpunk things my villains have done yet. It's absolute decadence only aristocrats are capable of getting away with. So into Chapter 5 it goes, along with the followup scene in which the cooked clone is being served, after Bernkastel is blown up by a mon his ex-wife sent to his phone.

The followup. Chairman Becket's serving this well cooked Shira clone to none other than the real ruler of the American Empire, the President of President Goldman Sachs & Company, a ruthless corporate raider who looks like a simulant and plays dress-up in a cop uniform even though he doesn't have Police Guild membership:

President: I thought I ordered you to serve me the real Shira Thomas!
Becket: I was hoping this would inspire you toward revenge.
President: Bull pucky! I won't be satisfied until the real Shira Thomas is right here on this table, specially prepared personally for me!
Becket: You try catching her, then.
President: My men are already working on it. Speaking of which, how's my old friend Mark?
Becket: He is already dead.

Now to get back to drawing my callipygian heroine — the stubborn original, that is...

Inside Spanner: Memetic Drift and the Ayn Rand Problem

There's a lot of Objectivists among the Corporates in Spanner, or at least they like to think they are. Problem: the Corporates are essentially the same as the villains of Atlas Shrugged. Spanner's "church of Ayn Rand" is no more similar to Ayn Rand's or Nathaniel Branden's Objectivism than the Catholic Church is to Jesus' religion or early Jewish Christianity. However, there is one crucial similarity, which I consider the fatal weakness of Objectivism and especially its ethics:

Social denialism.

That's the denial that humans have a social nature. In the infamous words of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher: "Society does not exist." In other words, humans are by nature solitary predators — or should be. That "should be" is the core of Rand's egoist ethics — and of Max Stirner's philosophy of extreme egoism. This works to the benefit of those at the top of the Corporate hierarchy, the High Corporates who bear the titles "MBA" and especially "Incorporated". It doesn't work too well for ordinary civilians, who possess the social nature Corporates do not.

Here's the mutation: what if Rand's corporatist villains were her most fanatical believers? This, in fact, is what's happened in real life: only the James Taggarts and Orren Boyles are left when the religious Objectivists have left for real cults and the irreligious ones have grown tired of the philosophy's many contradictions and increasingly archaic errors (it is, after all, a distilled version of the worldview of the Gilded Age that lasted from the end of the Civil War to the beginning of the Great Depression, roughly 1870-1930). Once the religionists and the realists have left, then, you have the corporatists. I've observed that these people, including the Koch and Romney clans, are predominantly billionaire heirs, some separated from their Enterpriser clan founders by five generations or more. They believe in the virtue of aristocracy for its own sake, because they see their inherited wealth as a gift from God or whatever. They believe that democracy is a vice because to lack money is by definition to lack virtue.

Egoism has become the religion of the Orren Boyle crowd. In Spanner as in Atlas Shrugged, these people have no genuine sense of self, so they must build their false self (the colloquial definition of "ego") to compensate. As it turns out, Rand herself has become their guide, their master in ego-building! And so they build their egos into giant monsters. They deify their egos and build temples to themselves. They demand that all "lesser" people bow down and worship their egos as gods Or Else. And of course they build theocratic dictatorships dedicated to the glory of their egos. Now you understand the Corporate caste in Spanner.

Now witness their leader, one Prince William Richard Astor Cromwell-Becket of Dictel, Incorporated, Chairman of the United Corporations. Richard Becket used to be a superhero codenamed Neron back in the Cold War. He's the answer to the question, what if an older version of Ozymandias from Watchmen took over the world? He prides himself on doing deals during sex. His grandmastership of the Illuminati, however, is the subject of another post, on the elitist premises of fundamentalist "Nicolaitan" Gnosticism. But how can this guy reconcile Objectivist materialism with unworldly Gnosticism? In the way he deifies his ego, of course! This contradiction first comes to a head in Chapter 15, in which the Becket brothers and their sister Drusilla get their egos smacked by it.

Any meme can mutate into something radically different from what it claims to be. But some weaknesses in its philosophy encourage some very undesirable mutations. Ayn Rand's social denialism is a particularly pertinent case in point. That's not just because it's central to the Corporate worldview in Spanner, but also because it's become the elite consensus in America today, and the non-elite are suffering the consequences...

Spanner R4 Update: Chapter 4, First Pass: Slashers, Gangsters, Jihadis, and Nihilists

First Revision 4 edit of Chapter 4, with a special focus on the villains: serial killers Oliver Thorwald, Johnny-Johnny Johnson, and Mark Bernkastel; misanthropic Corporate warlord Lars Thorwald; crime lord Arvid Shield; various Klown gangsters; the mobsters whose Syndicates are identified by ethnic slurs; the third jihadi out of the five who escaped from Bangor Jail in Chapter 3; and that nameless Nihilist who shoots up a coffee shop and tears out his own throat in the brand new opening sequence.

In that opening sequence we find out something important about Shira's Charmer power: if your faith is absolute enough, even faith in nothing, you have no defense against a Charmer as powerful as Shira (or Arvid). She'll demonstrate this over and over in subsequent chapters. Also, she explains the difference between terrorists and nihilists: terrorists want to take over (their specialty is demanding unconditional surrender Or Else), but nihilists merely want to destroy everything. During the fight scene, Jennifer shows that being a Final Girl means she has no more tolerance for nihilists than she does for serial killers (e.g., Bernkastel in Chapter 5). (Reminder to self: at least map out a rough plot summary for The Jennifer Theory so you'll have something to work with once you get to the visual novel.)

Scenes from the Script Frenzy TV episode script include:

1. the funeral of Dr. Lars Thorwald (whose cloned backup bodies were poisoned in Chapter 3), now merely the notification of his explosive death, but still introducing his research chief and sometime lover Dr. Mina Tatsumi;
2. the flight over Dictel Park in Bangor (the fictional city I placed west of Bremerton next to the nuclear submarine base) that turns into a fight between Shira and Bernkastel over a girl who turns out to be Mimi, originally introduced in Chapter 5;
3. the four scenes with Desiree's lost daughter Lucie as she escapes Drusilla;
4. the Shira/Hope love scene in which Shira warns Hope never to give in to the temptations of power in the Teachers Guild hierarchy;
5. the "Touhou Online MMORPG" scene with "Aya Shibata" and the first online appearance of J.T. Sparks as "Debaser"; and
6. the coffee shop scene in which Shira finds herself being headhunted by Corporate coolhunters she names "John Nike" and pranks them by slipping Alka-Seltzer into their Diet Cokes (remember that experiment?).

The rest of the chapter remains from the Second and Third Revisions. However, there's a few changes I want to make:

1. I want Jennifer's cousin Samantha Blair to return;
2. Polly's mother Rosalie (Shira's dad's first love) will join the family strategy conference mid-chapter;
3. Ariel's shop will be in Bremerton rather than Port Townsend, which will be a major plot point come Chapter 16;
4. Hiromatsu Fukuda, the "otaku no baka" who manages to marry the anime version of Aya Shibata, gets facetiously dubbed "Hiro-nyan" by Shira (partly a homage to flighty Yui and her Azu-nyan in K-On!; "nyan" is Japanese for "meow"); and
5. the cats at Shira's apartment need to be introduced, not only red tabby Mikan walking on the piano keyboard, but a neutered yet still fierce Angora named Tanner (named after MGM's scariest lion) who will later show an even more violent antipathy toward Dr. Becket than Mikan does in Chapter 16 and should be introduced probably purring on the bed due to his special fondness for Shira, whom animals tend to love as much as they hate Dr. Becket; there's also a dog named Catalina, one of the sweet-tempered Reston pit bulls, who is Shira's registered K-9 that she'll be walking a lot in dog-friendly downtown Bremerton.

My goal right now is just to finish scenes. I'll cut the chapter down to size (once again, to just over 15,750 words) on the second pass.

My 6-Year Artist's Block Is Over

It was 2006 when I abandoned drawing in order to focus on NaNoWriMo, sometimes to the exclusion of all else. It wasn't even till the exact middle of JulNoWriMo 2010 that I even returned to Spanner at all (with the inspired near-final version of the Intro). Suddenly, after six years, I find myself inspired to draw again.

Now, inspiration sometimes comes for the most unexpected reasons. Shira's own tagline is "expect the unexpected". And of course she's the character I've started to draw again. So why did I start drawing her again? Why, because her butt is so beautiful I felt compelled to visualize it on paper.

No, I'm not posting sketches; I'm still rusty, so they're not good enough yet. I'm going to post complete drawings, done in Inkscape, in full color, showing off some of the clothes she wears in the story. There's the getup in Chapter 3 with the purple Pedobear baby tee, pleated tartan microskirt, gangsterskin boots, and Cookie Monster plushie hat. There's the (not much of a) Kitsap Kouriers uniform she hoverboards in during Chapter 4. And of course there's the sailor-suit school uniform she wears to Bangor High. Last but not least, video body paint. And then I'll update her character profile for the new Fourth Revision continuity. In the meantime, I'm going to practice so I get her looking right, and other characters as well. Once she looks right, I'll post pictures.

So now I'm drawing again. That means I'm back to teaching myself how to draw the figure. I already know a few things, but only enough to draw figures standing rigidly upright in front, back, and side views. My challenge: learn to draw my characters so they look like they're moving naturally. This is important not just for character designs and the eventual comics, but for animation as well.

And that's not all. With 50 Songs in 90 Days coming in just under a month, songs are starting to come to me again, and I realize I'm going to have to practice my singing and instruments again...

Spanner R4 Update: Three Chapters and Three Interludes Complete

Spanner Chapter 3, Revision 4, is now pretty much perfect. Like Chapters 1 and 2, I took out a lot of dialogue and added more action. Some examples:

1. The big escape from the escape-proof jail, courtesy of a certain virtual demon named Rebel Styles.
2. The maiden voyage of the cherry-red Mustang named Rio, complete with "first start-up" scene.
3. Prudish old ladies attempting to stone the cousins (Shira, Jennifer, and Karen) for being affectionate.
4. The mass Mexican standoff between right- and left-wing terrorists.

So in Chapter 3, as in the previous chapters, there's now a lot more action and excitement in the Fourth Revision than there was in the Third. There's also somewhat less dialogue and a lot less narrative-killing exposition. Even so, the text and events of Chapter 3 now fit its ironic title, "Rock Is Dead" (the point being that it isn't, no matter how much the entire System tries to make it so), than ever before.

Also complete: the brand new Interlude 3, written entirely from scratch specially for the Fourth Revision. Called "One Nation Under Copyright, All Rights Reserved", it seems at first to be the violent adventures of an "IP Defender", or intellectual enforcer, for the Media Industry Association of America, depicted as if it were a cult. Then "Martin Martian" (real name unknown) gets sent by Jesus America after an especially defiant IP pirate named — Rebel Styles, who just happens to look and dress exactly like Shira, only the story's set in L.A. rather than Seattle. Is this a flashback? To quote Shira and/or Rebel: "If I tell you, I'll have to kill you." A few plot twists later, it turns out to be the origin story of a villain already introduced in Chapter 4, IP Defender R. A. Leggett. After writing the new Interlude 3, I went back two chapters to replace the mention of Leggett in Chapter 3 with the first mention of IP Defenders, of which Leggett is the first introduced.

One thing that changed between the Third and Fourth Revisions: the consensual incest theme. I find it insisting on foregrounding itself even more this time, both yuri and non-yuri. As mentioned in Chapter 3, the Richter-Thomases are not normal, even for Rockers. The second love scene in the entire story, in one of the new Revision 4 flashbacks in Chapter 1, is a four-way involving two mothers (who were lovers long before they were sisters-in-law), two daughters (who are cousins), and something close to erotic satori. Chapter 3 reveals a sexual tension between Shira and her Rocker father so intense that she can say "He is my wife." Then there's all of Chapter 7, even unrevised... Seems Shira, the canonical Launcher Of A Thousand 'Ships, may end up sleeping with every important character in the series. I'll probably end up having to serialize the Fourth Revision on Tumblr rather than here, since Tumblr can handle it, though I'll keep the chapter link posts here.

And so my next task will be Chapter 4. It'll be the first chapter for which I'll be drawing from this year's Script Frenzy script. There's still a few unadapted scenes left. I also have major changes in store for a few scenes, including the one late in the chapter which introduces Ariel Shield's New Age store and her gangster brother Arvid. I also have the task of cutting it down to size. I'll probably take a rest before I take on the task. In any case, here goes...

Spanner R4 Update: Chapter 4 Ready to Edit, Interlude 3 Finished (Preview of Interlude 4 Included)

Sometimes simpler is easier. This time, I saved Spanner Chapter 4 in HTML directly from Word and used Notepad++'s HTML Tidy module to clean up the screwy Microsoft markup instead of 1) changing the styles in Word 2) going online to convert the RTF file into ebook form 3) unzipping the ePub file 4) then cleaning up the markup. With a few find-and-replace operations, I inserted my custom markup and replaced all the quotes, apostrophes, and screwed-up special characters with the HTML entities I use (’, —, and the like). Once I make the HTML file easily readable, Chapter 4 will be ready to edit.

Its companion story is now finished. The new Interlude 3, "One Nation Under Copyright, All Rights Reserved", turned out to be the origin story of a villain who makes his first appearance in Chapter 4, Intellectual Property Enforcement Bureau agent R. A. Leggett, out of the death of his more experienced and fanatical mentor, one Martin Martian, at the hands of a fourteen-year-old Rebel Styles who looks and dresses exactly like Shira but is not. It also reveals a little more background behind the Conservative Revolution, specifically the important role the Media Industry Association of America monopoly cartel played in it. The atmosphere of this misadventure of Corporates, however, is that of religion and even cultism rather than business, economics, or politics. And it gives Rebel her own tagline:

Fee Rebel Styles
angel of chaos

...a tagline she shares with her alter ego Aya Shibata, whom a scene in Chapter 2 describes as "the Technosphere's most scandalous Player" and hints that she needs in Gensoukyou, home of the Touhou "bullet hell" shmup series, where all the characters have taglines. Now that Interlude 3 is finished, it will go into the Episode 4 ebook right after Chapter 4.

The old Interlude 3 is now part of Interlude 4. IIRC it was the Interlude 4 of Revision 3. Now "The Law of Social Darwinism" is the first part of Interlude 4, "The Rules of Tournament", which follows Chapter 5. This opening section, a Corporate manifesto or five-part statement of apocalyptic faith, reads in its initial version:

the law of social darwinism:

Natural selection has failed. Man has grown weak. His genes are at war with themselves. He is on the verge of extinction.

Compassion, sentiment, and love are the poison that is destroying the Race. The poison has given rise to a conspiracy named Humanism that promotes a doctrine called Liberalism that it has enthroned as the dysgenic horror of Communism: the sacrifice of the blood of the Best so that the worst may live and feed at their expense.

The best must seize control of the machinery of evolution for themselves. They must purge the Race of the Race-destroying poison of sentiment from the human genome and enthrone once more Eugenics as queen of the sciences forever.

The only way to save Man from extinction is to establish the dictatorship that will reverse the damage the cult of Humanism has inflicted upon the Race. It shall purge the Race of the weak, promote Profit over people, and raise the best to Godhood.

Thus shall Man fulfill his eternal destiny: to wield absolute dominion over Earth and conquer the infinite kingdom of Space.

Those of you who have read Bram Dijkstra will recognize echoes of his exposés of the Overclass blood mysticism that overran Europe in the 19th and early 20th centuries until the eugenics-based Nazi empire was finally smashed. That mysticism claimed that semen, brains, blood, and money (and possibly even oil) were the identical substance. One of the themes of Spanner is that hierarchy retards human evolution, especially at the top. And of course this manifesto of Corporate faith foreshadows the Corporate Terror that will ravage the American and Chinese Empires in Books 3 and 4. The (eventually revealed) author? None other than Richard Becket, pope of the Corporates, superhero name Neron, who is to Spanner what Ozymandias is to Watchmen.

The rest of Interlude 4 (the original Interlude 3 from Revisions 2 and 3) follows in the sections "The Rules of Tournament" and "Bangor High School: Dictel Stadium: 19 August 2014". I'll get back to those when I'm editing Chapters 5 and 6, since those sections explain so much of the School Arc that references are made to it all the way into Chapter 22.

Spanner R4 Update: Done With That Chapter? The Characters Beg To Differ

So you think you're through editing Spanner Chapter 3? Wrong! Now Karen and Polly want in the boardwalk fight scene, Willa wants a more cyberpunk videophone, and Talia's yelling at you for omitting her from the Patriot-versus-terrorist mass Mexican standoff at the end. Your characters are the real authors of this story, so you're going to have to give them what they want. Fortunately, what they want is just what you need to make "Rock Is Dead" more, well, rockin'.

Sure enough, this is precisely what happened to me the previous two chapters: I thought I was done, I patted myself on the back, and then here come the characters demanding revisions. This is how I ended up cramming more good stuff into Chapter 2 than I ever thought possible while going only 50-60 words over my 15,750-word chapter limit. Now I'm about to do the same to Chapter 3.

Meanwhile, I'm about to build the ebook of Chapter 2 and Interlude 2. Chapter 4 is also followed by an Interlude, this time a completely new one. (The old Interlude 3, "The Law of Social Darwinism", is now part of Interlude 4, "The Rules of Tournament", which follows Chapter 5; the new Interlude 3, "One Nation Under Copyright, All Rights Reserved", is currently half-written, but I already have great ideas for its second draft.) Chapter 3 doesn't have an Interlude after it. What to do? I know. Reach back into my list of Spanner Side Stories, some complete and some still unwritten, and stick one in the Chapter 3 ebook as a bonus story.

Which story to use? I've got a few science fiction ones written or planned, but I don't want to use any of those yet. I'm saving the "Satan Claus" story for the Series 2 Christmas episode (likely Chapter 29 or 30). So I decided I'll write a completely new story. Step 1: swipe a title from some New Wave song, say, "Senses Working Overtime". Step 2: what's it about? How about the effect Shira's Tracker training has on her love life? Trackers, in learning how to see animal and human tracks that are completely unnoticeable to normal humans, learn to amplify their perception to almost superhuman levels. It takes discipline for a Tracker to keep themself from following any interesting trail. What would a highly trained Tracker with such high-keyed perception do in bed? How would she romance somebody?

Now I'll plot that story, finish Chapter 3, finish Interlude 3, and then get back to Chapter 4. Come to think of it, I'm actually starting to see some parallels between the new story and the new Interlude 3...

Spanner R4 Update: New to Chapter 4, A Shock Cold Opening!

Hollywood calls it a "cold open": the story begins right in the middle of the action. When I read the news of a mass murder in a Seattle café, I asked myself, what would have happened if Shira and Jennifer were there? Between Charmer and Patternist, it wouldn't have happened — unless the killer appeared out of nowhere and suddenly started shooting. There's the new cold opening to Spanner Chapter 4: characters peacefully drinking coffee and holding conversation when suddenly this happens; he manages to kill two and injure five with his full-auto pistol with 30-shot magazine before Shira and Jennifer take him out. I even have the heavy-metal soundtrack, frozen in time. Afterwards:

Sparks: Just what we need. Another terrorist.
Shira: (grimly) No. Not terrorist. Nihilist.

For about a decade's worth of Project Notebooks (until about 2003 or so), I wrote notes about a faction called "Nihilists". Now I know precisely what they are: those who commit acts normally considered terrorist, except their motive is not intimidation but pure destruction. Like the terrorists, they are both solos and gangsters. This nameless nihilist is the first to appear in Spanner — Oliver Thorwald's just a Corporate trust-fund twit turned Special Forces soldier having fun killing "subhumans" and "un-Americans" — but his sudden attack and death announce the presence of the new villain who in Revision 4 dominates Chapters 4 and 5: Mark Bernkastel, the serial-killer teacher (original concept: the "Third" from the manga and anime Future Diary without the "future diary", given my usual wicked twist). He will give our heroines their first real introduction to Nihilism.

It's not merely "the hatred of the good for being the good" as Ayn Rand put it (Nietzsche's word for that: "resentment"). Nihilism, the cult of nothingness, is hatred of existence and the desire to destroy everything. Nihilists like the Seattle mass murderer in the news specifically target the best precisely because of their love of life. In Chapter 5, when Shira accuses Bernkastel of being a terrorist, he laughs. He laughs at the terrorists for their idealism and their delusion that they're (super)heroes. (In one of the new Chapter 1 flashbacks, Willa says terrorists and superheroes do the same thing: substitute their own individual heroism for the mass action required to overcome tyranny.) He will lay out the theory of Nihilism in detail. Then he will take on Shira, Leila, and Jennifer in Dictel Park. He will even sneer at Oliver and his pet psycho Johnny-Johnny.

But that's in Chapter 5. In the Revision 4 action climax to Chapter 4, added for Script Frenzy 2012, Shira flies her hoverboard over Dictel Park to survey the gangs only to find herself rescuing a girl from the serial killer she will know next chapter as Mark Bernkastel. That girl is Mimi, who since Revision 2 had made her first appearance in Chapter 5. Shira saves her life and vows to be her "knight protector".

In summary: Chapter 4 now has a new "random massacre" opening scene written just today and a new "rescue the girl from the mad slasher" climax written in script for in April for Script Frenzy. As with the previous three chapters, Chapter 4 is turning out a lot more interesting in Revision 4 than ever before.

Then there's the completely new Interlude 3, "One Nation Under Copyright, All Rights Reserved", in which an extremely fanatical and ruthless Media Industry Association of America intellectual property enforcer takes on a young woman who claims to be the dangerous Rebel Styles. I got stuck on that for a couple days. What unstuck me was this new passage: "Martin Martian [his handle] prays to the Corporations of the MIAA. The Corporations pray to the entity they themselves worship. Its name is GOD, for Guardian of Democracy (in neoconservative jargon)." etc. I may finish Interlude 3 tonight.