8FOLD/ACRA: Jolt City # 23, "...Their Last Adventure!", NOTES

[Andrew Perron]

On 9/11/2015 8:04 PM, Tom Russell wrote:
> On Friday, September 11, 2015 at 6:24:24 PM UTC-4, Andrew Perron wrote:
>> On 9/7/2015 8:59 PM, Tom Russell wrote:
<snip>
>>   > It's because Derek's my friend, and he trusts me. Which means I don't
>>   > have to save the world all on my own. I don't even have to be the
>>   > person to do the heavy-lifting."
>>
>> Awwwwwwwwww! <3 That's an AMAZING way for the time-travel prophecy trope to go.
>> Sweet and original. I love it.
 >
 > Thank you. I'm not a big prophecy guy generally, because it inherently robs
 > living things of their agency.

Yeah, I'm not a fan of just up and declaring "This is how the future will be, 
unchangeably". You can always change the future.

>>   > She holds up her Singularity
>>   > Gauntlet. "They all know. I've had to lie about it for so long, always
>>   > worried that someone would find me out, always holding everything in,
>>   > and now it's like I can breathe again."
>>
>> Yesssss. <3 (Also, now I'm thinking of her as Garnet.)
>
> Who?

 From Steven Universe. Badass black alien lady with power gauntlets. The 
strongest. <3

>>   > She sends the email. He hears her take in a deep breath, holding it
>>   > pensively. She releases it. "Derek, I don't really know you, and I
>>   > didn't really know Martin. But it seems to me that if he did that for
>>   > you, that he thought you were worth it."
>>   > He doesn't know what to say to that. After a while, he thanks her
>>   > and hangs up.
>>
>> Awwwwwwww... This scene is expressing these emotions really well.
 >
 > Thank you. I was worried there was too much crying, and choking up, and
 > nodding in several of the scenes, but at the same time, if ever it's going to
 > wear everything on its sleeve, the finale would be it. Hopefully overall it
 > didn't end up being too much Crying Hobbits.

This is stuff that definitely needed to be expressed, and it didn't feel 
over-the-top.

>>   > "I know what you're going to say," says Dani. "That I wasn't really
>>   > dead, just trapped between dimensions. And that it was a fluke. That
>>   > the implant in Martin's neck keyed in to just the right frequency to
>>   > prevent me from getting lost. That once he got to the place where I
>>   > died, the implant brought me back to a physical body. But that. But
>>   > that's not what happened.
>>   > "What happened was, Martin loved me so much that he brought me back
>>   > from the dead."
>>
>> Yesssss. :D I mean, it makes sense - if emotions correlate with physical
>> vibrations, including those for moving between dimensions, then the right
>> emotional vibration can clearly affect someone's dimensional state. It's
>> basically the flipside of the trick pulled earlier in this issue.
>
> ::nods::
>
> I'm glad you caught onto this. I was worried it'd be too subtle of a connection.

To be honest, I wasn't sure if it was intended or not - but it's a rather lovely 
connection.

>> Hrm. I'm not sure how I feel about this twist - Anders was screwed-up, but the
>> worst thing he did before was taking his father's stuff away from Martin; a jerk
>> move, but only that. On the other hand, "discovering who and what he really was"
>> implies things that might explain it... we shall see, I guess. @.@
 >
 > You also need to put it in the context of what he's been through in the two
 > years after he denied Martin his inheritance. He was kidnapped and tortured
 > for at least a week (Green Knight Annual) shortly after his father's death.
 > Since then there have been multiple kidnapping attempts-- # 12 was one. #18
 > another. He had reason to believe that the Little League of Doom was after
 > him in #19. All of these could stress out a "normal" person, and might result
 > in a psychotic break.
 >
 > Anders isn't a "normal" person, though. He doesn't have any kind of emotional
 > safety net whatsoever. No friends to depend on, no family. He isn't loved by
 > anyone, and that's because he doesn't love anyone back-- he doesn't know how.
 > He never really learned how to love anyone-- and that really falls on his
 > parents, especially his father.

Oof. That's a good point - I hadn't really put all of those things together; I'd 
only been thinking as far as the Annual.

 > If the whole of JOLT CITY is in some way about the importance and power of
 > friendship and forgiveness-- about Martin learning to accept the help of
 > others and to depend on them; about Derek learning that his superpower is
 > being a good friend, and to depended upon; about putting the past behind
 > you-- then Anders has to some degree always been a counterpoint: he has
 > always been what happens when you don't have friendship, and when you can't
 > forgive.. Really, it's what makes him a good nemesis for Derek-- he is in
 > many ways his opposite.

He really is! That trait goes back to the beginning, with the contrast between 
him and Martin.

 > I didn't always know that Anders was going to be Caracalla, but when I looked
 > at what Caracalla would have to be-- a male; wealthy; someone cut off from
 > his emotions; someone who is alone and isolated and angry-- I realized that I
 > had two options.
<snip>
 > The other was to use the existing character that already all these traits,
 > for whom at least some readers have at least in theory some kind of emotional
 > connection-- some kind of empathy for how badly his parents screwed him up.
 > Plus he already had reasons to know (1) about Derek and Martin's secret
 > identities, (2) about the underground Cradle Research facility, and (3) about
 > the Dyzen'thari. So to me the advantages of this heel turn greatly outweighed
 > the disadvantages-- it made a kind of cold logical sense, and, as I said, his
 > previous psychology and his history of traumas minus the absence of any
 > stabalizing/loving element could result in the specific psychological profile
 > I had already created for Caracalla.

That all makes sense. I guess... I guess the one thing I would've wanted, then, 
was more appearances by him in recent issues setting this up - it feels like we 
haven't seen him for a while. (Though I guess it hasn't been *that* long, in 
terms of issue numbers.) But if you didn't figure it out until more recently, it 
makes sense that that wouldn't be possible.

>> Oh my goodness. o.o I REALLY LIKE THIS ENDING AND APPROVE A LOT.
 >
 > It's really the only way it could have ended. It was always Dani and Martin,
 > and always mushy. :-)

Muuuuuuuuush. <3

>>   > [6] Kate is Kate Morgan, the second Dr. Metronome, a character I
>>   > co-created with Jamie Rosen back in JOURNEY INTO # 1, which takes
>>   > place in early 2005.
>>
>> And who is also rad.
 >
 > It took me a while to figure her out. I had planned to write her a lot early
 > on-- that's why she pops up in Speak! and in the Nostalgics-- but never
 > really got a handle on her until now. I think what it was is that I really
 > needed to get older-- tempered by disappointment, weighed down by
 > obligations, etc.-- to understand where she's coming from.

That makes sense. A big part of the point is that she's had to grow up too 
quickly, so to do that justice, one would need to do some growing up oneself.

 > The ballot proposal is based on something that happened locally. It was a bad
 > bill, but especially a bad time-- partially because of the aforementioned
 > recession, and partially because of the way municipal finance works in
 > Michigan.
 >
 > The short version-- there's a law that fixes the maximum taxes for a property
 > at the level they were when you bought your home. The idea is that those on
 > fixed incomes can't be "taxed out of their homes". So, if your home is worth
 > 100K when you buy it and the value goes up to 200K, you're only going to be
 > taxed at the rate for 100K. When you sell your home, then the taxes get
 > reassessed, and the taxable value of the home (hopefully) increases.

Reasonable.

 > But there's *another* law-- basically, when the taxable value of properties
 > in a city increases by a certain amount, then the amount of taxes levied must
 > be reduced to keep the total amount of taxes equal for that year. This is a
 > useful law that keeps the rate of tax increases down. It's been around a long
 > time-- it's part of the state constitution.
 >
 > The problem was how these two laws interacted with one another. If I buy my
 > home for $100K, its taxable value is fixed at that amount. When I sell my
 > house, and its value is reassessed at $200K, its taxable value goes up-- but
 > THEN the overall millage rate is DECREASED accordingly.

Hmmmmmm. So basically, there's only so much you can raise taxes, even if you're 
raising services as well. And property taxes are kept artificially low.

 > So ADD that into the mix, plus that police bill, and you have a recipe for
 > disaster even before you throw superheroes and Doc-Classers into the mix.

Indeed. ^^;

>> Also, as a final note: I'm curious about your decision not to show any of the
>> time-travel trip directly, especially as you did so at the end of #22.
 >
 > I was going to, but since all of the timelines would be equally valid, none
 > of them would be, if you know what I mean. I felt it would also ruin the
 > surprises, such as they were.

That makes sense, but since you set it up, I would've had, say, a flashback to 
it - that was what I was expecting when we saw Derek come back. Maybe when he's 
explaining how Martin died?

>> Andrew "NO .SIG MAN" "Juan" Perron, an interesting storytelling technique..
>
> Thanks! Love the commentary, as always.

Why thank you, sir, even though it is not as much as you deserve.

Andrew "NO .SIG MAN" "Juan" Perron, keep putting stuff off, mumble