One of the things writers don’t talk about much is the loss of your babies. Not actual babies, mind you. That would be terrible.1 No, what I’m talking about is the experience of coming up with a really great idea, filing it away in your Idea Box to be used later, and then watching, haplessly, as somebody else uses it.
My favorite example of this happening to me is probably Demonic. Demonic was an idea that I had and then fleshed out, a serial narrative – could be television, could be comics, could be short stories or novels. It was always on the back end of my “to-do” list: a story about a demon who, for reasons of his own, had decided that Armageddon was kind of a bad bag and that wouldn’t it be better if we didn’t have one?
Not a new idea, of course. Good Omens did it first. But I figured I had enough of a spin on it that my take was fresh: Darius, my demon, was an antihero rather than a lovable misfit like Gaiman/Pratchett’s Crowley. He wasn’t saving the Earth because he loved it, he was averting Armageddon because it offended his sense of pride. He didn’t bring along humans for companionship; he brought them along because he needed them to do very specific things for his Plan (always, always the capital P).2 It was distinct enough that it was its own story, a sort of “what if the Doctor was really kind of a bad person but still the protagonist” idea. I rather liked it. Plus I got to have the end of the world happen in Indianapolis, because you can justify anything in a story like this and why not?
Of course, then Eric Kripke came along and created Supernatural, which has way more in common with Demonic than Good Omens did; more political intrigue among the ranks of Heaven and Hell, more brutal in tone than Omens was, and oh yes it’s another story about averting Biblical Armadeggon and maybe you can do two of them but you can’t do three, not with that many similarities. I watched with that odd combination of delight and nausea as ideas I had also occurred to the writing staff of the show: the crossroads demons, the Croatoan plague3 and hellhounds had all been on my list, among other things.
So now Demonic gets shoved into the “scavenge” box, which is my mental box of ideas other people have also had but might have something I can use later. One thing I think I’ll eventually use somewhere else is my idea for Uriel, the archangel of Death. See, of late the Death pendulum has swung back towards Death generally being an unpleasant sort of anthropomorphic concept, as Neil Gaiman’s Death has faded into the background and meaner, more sadistic Deaths have taken the forefront. Supernatural’s Death is really kind of a prick, killing off an entire restaurant of people just to have a meet-and-greet, and he just piles on with other Deaths who are kind of dicks.4 Pratchett’s Death in the Discworld books is really the only holdout on the “Death is probably a pleasant enough fellow” side of the equation.
So my idea was that Uriel would appear as a kindly old hippie – think Tommy Chong in his late sixties, shuffling around a hospital in a fringed brown jacket in sandals, escorting the ghosts of children on towards whatever came next. I rather liked that image; I think it’s got some oomph to it.5 The idea of Death as perhaps just a bit mournful, a dedicated and concientious professional doing a really, really terrible job, is one that I think works. (Pratchett’s Death comes close, but is, when you get down to it, a bit too alien to really get existentially sad about his work. He might have a bit of a depressive moment, but he always rebounds. What I’m talking about here instead is a general sense of melancholy.)
That’s how writers recycle their own unused chaff, trying to find a little wheat they can still use. Because the great secret of writing is that you are not a special flower and your ideas are not unique snowflakes; somebody else will have them if you don’t use them.
- Also writers would talk about it all the time and write novels about it. And have. But I digress. [↩]
- Of course, over the course of the series discovering friendship et cetera humanized by his drafted “companions” and so forth. [↩]
- I was all NO SERIOUSLY I EVEN NAMED IT THE SAME GODDAMNED THING. That one physically hurt. [↩]
- See also: Final Destination’s unseen Death, who really is a total asshole. [↩]
- That is a very technical term. Oomph is quantifiable. For example, Tom Mota spraypainting the billboard in Joshua Ferris’ Then We Came To The End is a sequence with forty-one oomph. [↩]
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Have you ever read any of the Incantation Series?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_a_Pale_Horse
Peirs Anthony’s Death is not an old hippie, but the stoicism theme is explored.
I really felt that Supernatural jumped the shark when it went headlong into the whole Christian apocalypse thing. They were doing just fine with other mythologies and whatnot.
Same thing with Xena and the Legendary adventures of Hercules. All the other gods are knocked down to lesser beings when the Christian god comes riding in. In Supernatural the norse god Loki turns out to be the archangel Gabriel. Nothing against the actors, but FUCK that’s just salt in an open wound to me.
Though I will say I liked Uriel in the series. Its a shame he went evil and died.
Oh, btw SPOILERS.
Liz Williams has kind of a similar demon character to your idea in her excellent Detective Inspector Chen novels, so your baby has been double-used.
Also, Zenrage, I think the idea was that there are many tricksters, Loki and Old Man Coyote and Raven and many others among them. The Trickster in the show was never specifically named to be Loki.
The psychopomps in Gunnerkrigg Court are kind of similar. They’re not exactly aging hippies, but they’re creatures with solemnity and compassion. They’re not incarnations of Death itself – “psychopomp” is a very specific position in the supernatural realm, though one that Death him/her/itself stereotypically occupies – but still, fascinating things.
(I linked to the first comic, since the current one is very, very plot-heavy. Seriously, the whole thing’s worth a read-through, and the art gets a hell of a lot better.)
Having the Angel of Death be sad about his job would sort of make God a massive tool, wouldn’t it? God creates an angel capable of feeling bad about killing people, then assigns him the eternal and unending job of killing everybody?
About three years ago, a couple friends and I sat down over the course of a couple weeks to design an MMO. I don’t think we had any real expectations of doing anything with it, but we came up with a lot of what we thought were pretty interesting and innovative concepts.
Flash forward to earlier this year, when Star Trek Online comes out, doing a lot of the things we wanted to do, only they fucked it all up. Mixed space and ground combat, personal and ship customization, bridge crew as advancement, skill-based advancement with total points accumulated representing rank within Starfleet instead of a flat level … even if we did ever manage to do anything with our ideas, now it’d just be seen as an STO knockoff.
See Preacher.
Thanks for the insights!
Tanith Lee’s Flat-Earth stories had a rather melancholy death who ditched his duties IIRC. Having said that, she was writing almost 40 years ago so the idea that more malevolent personifications of death are on the rise currently still holds true.
(just wanted to chime in that Pratchett and Gaiman aren’t the only ones to make Death a more sympathetic character)
Hey, it could be worse. You could have this idea at the back of your mind about a paralyzed kid who is granted the power to transform into his favorite superhero…and then weeks later read about a new creator owned project from @#$%IN’ MARK MILLAR!
I’m pretty sure your “working guy Death” is a large portion of the concept of Dead Like Me. In other words, all your ideas have been used and abused and re-used so don’t worry about it…
While not a kindly old hippy, Jim Butcher’s Uriel (as found in the Dresden novels) appeared to Dresden as a kindly old janitor. Of the various “powerful entity” characters, he was also probably the one that was the nicest to Dresden.
As for Zenrage saying Supernatural jumped the shark with the biblical apocalypse, I think that was a natural evolution of the way things were progressing. It got a bit silly, but it was still working towards a point. Where Supernatural has really jumped the shark is in having another season past that conclusion. And if the sheer concept of another season wasn’t shark-jumpy enough, it begins with retcons and long-lost unknown relatives showing up to form a new cast.
BRB, ripping Uriel off. He sounds adorable.
I’ve read two or three books about angels trying to keep the apocalypse from happening since Good Omens came out, so I wouldn’t be too worried about not being able to use your take on that idea. And there are all sorts of fantasy novels about demons doing stuff that proves that at least some of them aren’t all bad.
I’d imagine your concepts are still viable.
Just look at all the fantasy/detective series out there that fall into either the “like Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter, only better written” category or the “if you like The Dresden Files, you might like my series” category. Usually, all they really do in the latter case is make Harry Dresden a woman and maybe have their female detective with magic powers consult with the U.S. Marshals or some other federal agency instead of the local cops.
Fantasy writers have never met a good idea they weren’t ashamed to recycle. It’s kind of like playing the blues. Originality isn’t as important as how well things are executed.
Cookie McCool
>>The Trickster in the show was never specifically named to be Loki.
Oh Yes He Was. In the episode Hammer of the Gods (S5:Ep19), several gods appeared including Odin, Mercury, Kali, Ganesh and Baldur and then The Trickster showed up and was named as both Loki and the Archangel Gabriel.
My bad, Zenrage. You’re right, that is hell of lame.
So basically, what Kripke was saying was that Frost Giants are really Archangels…
And Supernatural still hasn’t jumped the shark. I doubt the new relatives are anything more than bad guys in waiting.
And what was retconned?
Brian T., you don’t need to split supernatural fantasy into Anita Blake and Dresden. You just need to split it into early Anita Blake and later Anita Blake. The early books were the serious stuff. This is the style of Dresden, Greywalker, Hallows, and the like. Then Blake books started focusing more and more on sex. Around the ninth book, Hamilton had turned the series from supernatural to hardcore porn in a supernatural setting. This is the style of any hardcore porn, porn, and much fanfic written in a supernatural setting. (I’ve heard the most recent Blake books started including non-sex-related story, but I abandoned trying to read the series around the twelfth book. At that point, the “story” was reduced to nothing but a few pages of filler used to give Blake excuses to move around town while having sex with every male supernatural she saw.)
As for the similarities between Dresden and early Blake, I recall Butcher saying he (like many of the supernatural fiction writers) was influenced by the Blake books.
As for Supernatural, I can’t remember, but did the Trickster say Loki was always him, or did he take the role of Loki from the original?
As for the retcon in Supernatural, introducing all these previously unknown relatives is itself a retcon. The return of Sam was shown in the season 5 finale, but the new season goes as far as to say that Sam’s been free since not long after his imprisonment, has hooked up with a new group, and everyone except Dean knows it? Geez, at least say that Sam’s been out only a few weeks at most, not that everyone has been hiding it from Dean.
It was also a tease than the end of season 5 implies it is Lucifer-Sam, or at least a demon Sam, that is free, with the street light flickering out at he approaches Dean’s house. Then the next season premiere has that no, it’s just regular Sam, and ignore that image from the end of last season because we are going to pop him back into Dean’s life in a different way.
Well, everyone has been hiding it from Dean because they know how he’d react-not well. It was never implied to be Lucifer Sam at the end of season 5, either. They confirmed it wasn’t ages ago.
Also, presumably Gabriel created a new identity for himself, so he was always Loki. He says he went into ‘Witness Protection’ of a sort
You know, everyone always says that Anita Blake devolves into hardcore porn by the ninth book, but I’ve never been able to push my way through the early books to get to it. Maybe I should just skip ahead to the good stuff. 🙂
I don’t think there is any good stuff when it comes to Anita Blake. Some people can even fuck up fucking.
@Baines Except right before Sam appeared in Dean’s garage the light flickered again so something is quite possibly fairly rotten in Denmark. There’s definitely something weird going on with Sam.
I don’t think Gabriel ever stated whether or not he was the original Loki. He said he went into his own personal witness protection program, but that could mean anything.
I’ll buy that the relatives could be seen as a retcon but that Sam’s been back is merely a plot reveal, IMO.
Also the everyone that’s been keeping Sam’s secret = just Bobby, who hasn’t seen Dean in person since Sam and Lucifer fell in the hole. Dean hasn’t had contact with anyone else. That’s not all that unbelievable, to me.
I thought the season premier wasn’t the strongest SPN episode that I’ve ever seen, but IMO it was far from the weakest. and fit thematically with the rest of the series.
Isn’t… isn’t your idea a lot like Hellboy? Granted he went off in a different direction, but I’m sure you would’ve twisted Demonic in some way if it ever got off the ground. I guess the fun part would be the characters interactions anyway, so it’s not like it matters.
Also, @Darth Paradox, I thought of Gunnerkrigg too. It’s been awhile since I’ve read it though.
This is why I would like to see a mini series featuring The Master. Something like a six episode series, half mini/half teaser for the next series of Doctor Who. It would feature the Master going places, meeting people, killing, stealing and generally being a magnificent bastard. It could star John Simm, with him regenerating at the end or start with a regeneration so Moffat can cast whoever he would like to see as the Master.
For me this idea harkens back to the Master’s first appearence where he says “I have too few worthy opponents. When they’ve gone I always miss them.”, but we’ve never seen him face anyone but the Doctor and I’d like to see how the Master would fair against a foe who we couldn’t guarantee would last to the end of the story.
Y’know, I doubt this was at all intended, but all this discussion of Supernatural later season plot makes me increasingly glad I never bothered to get past the first 10 or so episodes.
Also, almost everyone I know who likes it seems to be a slash-girl, and they just Will Not Shut Up about the show and the slash…. *gah!*
I always thought the unseen rise of Harry Saxon would have made a fantastic two/three episode arc.
Meeting hapless, not-too-bright Lucy and crushing her spirit, leading the Toclafanes back to the past, engineering his own rise as Prime Minister, there’s some really first-rate vicious evil going on in there.
@BunnyM I am most definitely *not* a slash girl. While I have absolutely no problem with it’s existence it tends to make me uncomfortable. And not in that good oooh we’re being naughty way. Especially incest slash.
And yet I adore Supernatural. Mostly because it reminds me of old school Vertigo. I could easily see Dream or John Constantine showing up in an episode.
Happened to me with 30 Days Of Night, so yes, it’s annoying.
As far as “nice guy Death’s” go, the shinigami in Death Note are kind of interesting. I mean they are either just fun loving pranksters or getting emotionally involved with inappropriate people. I don’t think they are unlikable or even dickish, mostly.