Category Archives: Essays

This is a very boring name for me writing about the stuff that’s on my mind. I strive to make the essays more interesting than the word “essays” and this description.

Essays

The Border Between Books

Schlock Mercenary is a long form comic strip in which the fifteen years of daily updates are all part of the same continuity. That continuity is broken up into books, in large measure because I don’t expect anybody (not even me) to keep track of all the things that happened in the last 15 years of strips in order to enjoy the things happening this week.

When I start a new book, I reset some of the narrative “rules.” “New story” things start happening. We begin an all new set of dramatic and character arcs. If you’re blazing through the archives one click at a time, you’re going to miss this. With the current site design that can’t really be helped. If you’re reading the books in print, your arrival at the last page is a very strong signal that we’ve finished a story.

Today we sit at the boundary between Book 15 and book 16, and I created a “THE END” graphic and a “NEW BOOK STARTS HERE” graphic to try to communicate that. But what does the boundary mean? Here are the implications, with bullets:

  • Questions I left hanging in the last book are not on the front burner right now. Before I can answer them, I would have to ask them again.
  • Characters from previous books who are going to be important in this story will be introduced, or at least mentioned, fairly early on. This holds true for ships, locations, technologies, and events, as well.
  • The previous book’s themes are a closed matter. Delegates and Delegation is done saying what it had to say. Big Dumb Objects will open its own thematic discussion. If themes from previous books are going to be echoed, they’ll be reintroduced in order to prevent confusion.

You don’t have to read Schlock Mercenary in any particular way, and you certainly aren’t required to get out of it what I put into it (something I honestly don’t expect to happen very much.) Your reaction to a story–any story–is yours, and is based as much on who you are as on what’s in between the first and last pages of the story.

If, however, you want some clues as to how a story will unfold, it’s helpful to understand the form in which the creator is working. For Schlock Mercenary, that means observing the border between the books, and knowing that while the rules of the universe remain the same, each of these books has its own beginning, middle, and end.

As much as I’d love to start filling page after page with commentary about the stories I write, I’m going to leave that project for another day. For now, if you’ve got questions about the story, you’re supposed to. You’re on Page One. Everything is a question, including “what are the questions?”

I’ll do my very best to entertain you with the questions, the answers, and all the misery, misdirection, and mayhem that fall between them. This is my job, after all. And speaking of that, I need to get back to work…

Essays

That One YA Dystopia With The Ridiculous Premise

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You know that one YA novel? The dystopia with the ridiculous premise? Well, my fourteen-year-old daughter was given an assignment to write a similar sort of story. Specifically, the assignment was as follows:

Create a dystopia in which one of the rules of our society is either no longer a rule, or is enforced to an extreme. Write a story* in this setting.

(*I do not know what word-count was assigned, but I’m going to assume it was something less than novel-length.)

I struggle to enjoy that one YA novel with the ridiculous premise, but as assignments for fourteen-year-olds go, this is pretty awesome. “Take a piece of our world and change it. Now pour enough thought into it that you can tell an actual story.” I like assignments that require synthesis rather than regurgitation, and to me this is the very best kind.

I’ve recently made peace with the ridiculous premise of that one YA dystopia, but only by treating it as a thought experiment played out as a story, and designed to capture the imagination of the reader. The reader can then play out the same sort of world building exercise my daughter was assigned, and begin thinking about how our world might actually change in the future,  mulling over the full suite of implications rather than going all in on one ridiculous premise. It’s not prognostication, or futurism, but it builds the brain-muscles required for that sort of activity.

The pot is totally calling out the kettle for its fire-blackened state here, of course. I write comedic social satire wrapped in a future that is “plausible” in the same way that distilled water is a useful construction material. I have to carefully maintain some conditions, and occasionally throw some blinders on the the reader in order to prevent them from melting the whole thing down.  But this very exercise shows me exactly where the blinders are when I’m consuming that one YA dystopia, and I’m not very far into it before I realize that the scaffolding of the world has turned into a puddle, and now I’m sitting in it.

I appreciate how much thought got poured into that puddle, but that doesn’t mean I have to love having wet pants.

Essays

“What’s the difference between…?”

A group of us were talking, and a friend said “I heard a new joke!” Then he turned to me and said “Howard’s probably heard it already, but here goes…”

Q: What’s the difference between boogers and broccoli?

A: Kids won’t eat broccoli.

We all laughed (we includes me) and then in mock astonishment my friend said “you hadn’t heard that one?”

“Not that one” I replied, “but I’ve heard lots of jokes like it. By the time you’d finished the question I had three punchlines. You used the straight one. It’s a good one though. I laughed.”

At this point everybody was eyebrows-up. Was I really claiming to have three punchlines to a joke I’d just heard? Well, yes. The “what’s the difference between X and Y?” joke is a formula with lots of formulaic punchlines. Of course, it helped that broccoli is a food. In that context I immediately knew the stock punchline had to do with eating.

I went on: “I would have gone the self-deprecatory route, and said ‘I still won’t eat broccoli.”

They laughed, and there was some groaning. Formulaically, that punchline encapsulates the ‘kids eat boogers but not vegetables’ thought, and additionally identifies me as a kid in the worst possible way.

But I wasn’t done: “And then there’s one of the earliest change-ups on the joke: ‘that explains the broccoli salad you made.'”

More groaning, but still lots of laughter. Also, I could tell that this group of people was now nervous about telling me jokes. Hey, it’s okay to tell me a joke. Just don’t call attention to the fact that I may have heard it, because that’s a setup for more jokes and a soapbox.

I later shared this experience with my 12-year-old son, and we realized that there was a self-deprecatory version of that third punchline, giving us a fourth:

A: Oh, good. You’ll like this broccoli salad just fine.

For me, THAT one is the home run. Self-deprecatory AND I’m making YOU eat the boogers. Win/win!

The operating principle here, for me anyway, is that lots of setups can deliver more than one punchline, and often a good punchline can be made into a great one, or fine-tuned for the audience, with a little exploration. Using the same basic setup, I tried this on one of my old favorites, which goes like this:

Q: What’s the difference between a clarinet and an onion?

A: Nobody cries when you chop up a clarinet.

I quickly arrived at one where the joke is on the listener (the classic change-up on the formula):

A: This explains why you’ve had such trouble learning to play the clarinet.

Now that it was personal, it was time to return to the onion:

A: I didn’t cry when I chopped up your clarinet.

I’ve talked before about how the first punchline that comes to mind is low-hanging fruit. If you want to learn how to reach further up into the tree, take some old “Dad” jokes like these and see what other punchlines their setups can lead to.

And don’t be afraid to play with the setup, too. I love this gem:

Q: What’s the difference between an accordion and a trampoline?

A: Take off your shoes before jumping on the trampoline.

As I mused upon other punchlines, my son said “is an accordion sort of like a bagpipe?” Ah, my young genius…

Q: What’s the difference between an accordion and a bagpipe?

A: Which side of the road you’re on when you hit the player with your car.

(*Note: For the record, I enjoy well-played accordions, bagpipes, and clarinets, and not only can I tell the difference between broccoli and boogers, I can tell the difference between broccoli and cauliflower, and I’ll eat both of them.)

 

Essays

On Leap Days

It’s kind of ridiculous for people to think that an anniversary or a birthday only happens once every four years just because its original occurrence was on the 29th of February.

And if not ridiculous, at the very least it’s hypocritical.
Let’s say you were born on April 16th, 1970. That was a Thursday. The following year you didn’t get a birthday because you were just a baby. Also, April 16th was a FRIDAY, and your birthday is a THURSDAY. Your birthday, Thursday, April 16th, didn’t come that year. Waaaah so sad you big baby.

I was born on the 60th day of the year, which was February 29th. The next year I didn’t get a birthday because I was a baby. Also, the 60th day of the year was March 1st.

If you to expect leapers to not celebrate something because February 29th isn’t around, you should be prepared to surrender roughly 6/7ths of your own birthdays and anniversaries.  Of course, that ridiculous (but theoretically FAIR) practice will put the leapers under an additional shadow, because the same weekday for a leap day only comes back around every 28 years. And under that system, I’m still a couple of leaps shy of turning two.  But I WILL get a birthday party when that happens, because at two I am TOTALLY NOT A BABY.

Also, It will be a Thursday.