Tuesday, October 29, 2019

November Hiatus, Brand Zero, and a Gauntlet




Lately things have been getting busy in real life (not bad, mind you, just busy, like visiting Texas for a wedding. Not mine.) and a lot of stuff has ground to a halt for various reasons. In an effort to get some things back on track, I'll be taking a hiatus from most online spaces in November to try and get a draft done. Its absolutely doable from the outline I have, and should've been done in early October if a text file hadn't gotten corrupted on me, and a break will do me good. I was planning on a "Noirvember" thing again, but oh well. Maybe next year.

But before that, a couple of thoughts regarding a recent discussion in PulpRev circles.

Brand Zero is an idea posited by Rawle Nyanzi that bounces off of what Jon Del Arroz discusses here. In short, if you're convinced that the corporations that own and control all of the major entertainment franchises actively hate their established audiences, then don't give them attention. At All. About anything.

Brand Zero is a strong move, and a manifestation of “Just Don't Look.” Starve the beasts for money, but also starve them for attention. The last good Terminator movie was in 1991. Its dead, and the people who own it keep jolting the corpse to make the legs move so they can squeeze out some more dollars out of fans of the good old days.


Over the last couple of years, a cottage industry has arisen for commentary explaining why and how these once dominant franchise have screwed the pooch, and it was insightful stuff.

For a while.

Explaining how The Last Jedi is an abject failure of story structuring and insulting to an audience that has built up over 40 years is fine once. But there's only so many ways that you can say “Star Wars Sucks Now” without offering a practical solution or alternative before it gets old.

Star Wars could be saved, if ownership at the very top of Disney changed and the new boss fired everybody in a decision making capacity at Disney-Lucasfilm, apologized for how badly everything's been handled, put a hold on on live action movies for a time, produced a 2D animated version of the Heir to the Empire/Dark Force Rising/Last Command trilogy, then did a massive time skip forward or backwards for the next live-action installment.

I have a better chance of growing a third arm than Star Wars getting fixed. What George Lucas built up over 37 years only took Disney five years to destroy. Five.

Its dead. Might as well treat it that way.

Does that mean I'm going Brand Zero? Probably not fully. Star Wars was such an influence on my life, especially creatively, that I don't think I can ever fully shake it loose, but even so, I'll probably limit those discussions to the Legends Never Die side project, because for whatever flaws the Expanded Universe had, it was never as bad as what is out there now. I've already said my piece about Disney Star Wars on the blog, and outside of cruising Wookieepedia every now and then, I don't even consume NuCanon products anymore. I don't have anything else to say about it at this point (aside from this post, natch'). The same goes for all of the other major franchises. If I talk about Marvel or DC, it'll be about the old stuff that was made by competent storytellers. I didn't even bother to see Endgame. I don't care about the new stuff, so I'll probably just drift into Brand Zero by default.

The flipside of Brand Zero is promoting New Hotness instead of the Old & Busted. After the hiatus, I'll get on that, as well as doing some more classic pulp stuff in the pipeline.

But here's the thing: Positioning your work as a counterbalance to converged dinosaur franchises isn't enough. #StarWarsNotStarWars made sense a couple of years ago, but right now it doesn't. That old gif of a dog staring blankly ascupcakes are pulled away is more entertaining than Star Wars is nowadays. Its not a high bar to clear.

I don't care if its a sweeping space opera that's “like Star Wars, but Good.” I don't care if its an epic fantasy that reads like a mashup of Beowulf and Harry Dresden. I don't care if the book is explicitly written to piss off the SJW Death Cult. (If its a good book, it will automatically piss them off).

Oppositional marketing isn't going to get me to buy something. Give me a character I can give a shit about who faces obstacles that I want to see them overcome. The PulpRev and related indie fiction scenes have been making tremendous strides in the last 3-4 years, but the next step is cranking out characters that you fall in love with enough that you want to talk about them with complete strangers.

Everything. Boils. Down. To. Characters.

It doesn't have to be complicated. In fact, it shouldn't be. One or two sentences should be enough to tickle the amygdala.  “Farmboy dreams of leaving the farm and learns he's the lost son of mighty warrior and is swept up in a galactic civil war.” "Grim Puritan wanders the earth, driven by a burning desire to hunt injustice." "World War I veteran leverages a network of agents in a crusade against crime."

Just to prove I'm serious about this, here's what I've got: "Air Force washout awakens in the far future to find a Solar System ruled by a tyrannical empire, and his only hope for survival lies with a band of space pirates led by a mysterious masked woman with crimson hair."