Grey Hat Commentary: Chapter 2 · 7:59pm Mar 24th, 2015
This entry contains spoilers for Grey Hat. Be warned...
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Hope.
Such a simple thing, isn’t it? It gives power to the powerless and toples kingdoms. It can’t be killed, only suppressed and forgotten. The very nature of hope, such a simple concept in theory, but given the wide, wide world of the written word, it becomes a power unlike any other.
Reading is the one thing that occupies my off hours, and I have a personal favorite in scifi and fantasy. In the Wheel of Time, the entire 14 book series is building up to the Last Battle that decides the fate of good versus evil. The wheel knows no end and spins forever more... until evil wins. All you are doing, all humanity has ever done, is postpone another Last Battle when the ages spin again once more. It is a pretty depressing thing to think about: you will never wholly and truly win. If good wins, the wheel continues to turn. If evil wins, the wheel turns no more.
Why do people fight such a skewed battle against the lord of all darkness and evil? What possible good comes from such a disparagingly crushing sense of masochism? What of the vampires in the Masquerade? There’s no hope for you. There is no cure. You are already damned by the sins of the first murderer for killing his brother and his dark touch never leaves a vampire until final death. You spend your ageless days battling a constant hunger that never dies and eats away at your sanity. Give into that Beast. What point is there fighting it when the only final outcome is torpor or final death?
The best case to my knowledge is I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream. There is no hope. Humanity is dead, and there is nothing that you or the psychotic Allied Mastercomputer will do to ever change that. Your only companions are the tortuous AM and whatever playthings he’s kept for his own amusement. This isn’t a game you can win. Even if you utterly obliterate AM, you’ve already lost. You are psychologically tortured to broken and the world is dead. What is worth saving in a dead world populated by your worthless, empty husk?
Hope alone won’t let you win. Often in situations like those described above, there isn’t even a win to achieve. It becomes a battle not to win, but to stop yourself from losing. You fight not for a winning victory, but a moral victory. Even if it’s just this one, you can scream into the night that you are not broken, that you have triumphed over the obstacles thus far and not succumbed to the temptations.
My favorite example is the difference between the fates of James and Eddy in Silent Hill 2. Silent Hill is a place of redemption and punishment where even victory can twist you up inside you become a monster no different than the creatures that inhabit that dark place.
I know I am sounding like hope is such a useless little thing, but in terms of stories, at least when portrayed at face value, it is. It’s such a non-utilitarian thing my more rational side questions its presence at times, but that whimpering part of me that’s still human cherishes it with undying love. Still, for you to need hope, you need something you hope to get out of. There is darkness at the end of every light.
As you can tell, Fluttershy is suffering deeply. The themes for this particular chapter was loneliness, for which the three primary characters received in their own respects. Fluttershy, despite having her friend, can’t stop the feelings inside from eating her alive. Applejack, having Fluttershy, is noticing the cold shoulders from others like the quartermaster and the man in the goggles. For Henry it’s almost a palpable sensation that makes him detest being alone in his room. ‘Where have all the cowboys gone?’ is occasionally answered with ‘To space!’ I love Kirk, and Mal and Spike as much as the next, but up there all alone... I’m not sure how I’d take that. I’m a pretty solitary creature myself who quite literally talks to myself. The isolation and loneliness of an alien environment like the Clementine ship would oppose the herd sensibilities and instincts of ponies, and that’s exactly what I did. I learned from my mistakes in my minecraft story, and here I put into practice some of my theories and it payed the subtext paid the real dividends.
By far the trickiest part, even if it was the shortest, was the dream sequence. I rewrote it twice before settling on the final draft. Part of that was getting the proper mood, and part of it was nailing down what I wanted the stallion to say. Sharp followers would know it’s the same description of the Baron character I’ve used before, but this is not the same pony; I reuse the description and nothing more. I liked him well enough that I wanted to use him in something else, and here was a great way to utilize him. Kind, caring, but still: Fluttershy was a little afraid of him. I can’t exactly say too much about him right now. Yes, even though there was a spoiler warning at the top of this blog, it’s far too early to touch on him as well as I’d like. As important as he is to Fluttershy, he won’t be an A-lister. The earlier drafts do give a few clues as to what I was going for: a commanding presence with undertones of violence. Even as touching and careful as he was with Fluttershy, when she brought up something disturbing, he didn’t so much as flinch. Still he guesses what is wrong with Fluttershy, advising that running won’t do her any good when the real monsters are in the mind.
Clementine itself required a fair bit of research. I had already drafted the purpose of every single corporation far in advance, even some I won’t likely use in any respect, but I knew right off the bat what to do with OCO. The ship was indeed a lot cleaner in earlier drafts, but I felt like giving her a few scuffs and stretch marks would add a little character. Say that to your significant other at your own risk. I really couldn’t get good information on the type of vessel I wanted, especially theoretical space-faring vessels, so I had to settle for an aircraft carrier instead and farmed out the resources I could.
The aircraft carrier bunk was the first thing to come to mind, but I decided to give them a little more room due to their VIP access and Kludge already stating their importance. And no, Google, I don’t want to buy a space ship bunk bed, even one that looks like an AT-AT.
The Mess Hall was a little easier and click on the pic for the link. It wasn’t as if I couldn’t make this up on my own, but I am a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to the environment and scenery porn. If there is one thing I can do, it’s scenery porn. As pieces of Clementine came together, it started developing its own type of personality and quirks as a result. It’s easy to see that the quartermaster’s seen a lot of miles already. What exactly has the ship gone through so far? I had even rationalized a reason for why that had terrible coffee on board. It was a little surprising, considering even though the second and third charter were originally one chapter and Clementine was just a brief means to get from point A to point B, how much characterization some ship I named after Walking Dead would get.
Now while the next chapter is considerably longer, there were supposed to be combined. This was primarily due to there not being much in terms of this chapter outside of Fluttershy’s trauma and characterization. Although the trauma occurred in the prequel, it was up to me to write it. Thanks shiro.
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Don’t worry about reading the prequel in order to discover what happened; I’ll get around to it. But I digress. If I published both chapters as one chapter, I feared that the sheer scope of content in the latter half would drown out Fluttershy’s lament and torment. Now perhaps it wouldn’t or perhaps it would be even stronger in comparison. I’ve still got a lot to learn as a writer, so I consider this a little experiment.
Henry... Strike the dream, Henry was the most difficult to get right.
Engineer searching reminded me how much I didn’t give a crap about Prometheus, and showed some images were pure nightmare fuel or (surprisingly) pornographic. The two pictures above were the primary sources of inspiration for the man, even if I made up most of his physical description myself. His own characterization was hinted at, but this wasn’t his chapter. I feared about him not saying the right things to Fluttershy, especially if he ended up saying cheesy and cliched lines as a result. I didn’t give him any slang, or a drawl like Sam and AJ, but I still pictured him accented in my head. He’s your typical roughneck that drifts form place to place. You’d often seem such characters in shows like Deadliest Catch or some stupid oil drilling show whose name I forgot. We’ll see more of him later.
I would like to take this moment now for something a little less story-related. And if you too suffer from anything like Fluttershy, I’m willing to listen. I understand how it feels at times. Many times that’s often why I write some of these blogs: just to ascribe words to all those thoughts and feelings. The cavalcade of family deaths, that moderator who emotionally threatened a suicidal girl, social pressures, the loss of my dad. I know what it feels like to simply give up hope and stop caring. I’ve been there, and I’ll offer an ear to listen if you need it.
