Avatar photoSteven Savage

A World Of Elseworlds

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We're in an age of remakes, sequels, and one-offs based on existing properties, mostly Superheroes.  I hear talk of an "originless" Fantastic Four film, and if you're a fan of DC comics I've seen a lot of direct-to-video films.  None of these involve the usual origins stories as their known to their target audience.  Many of them don't exactly involve a continuity of much kinds except well-known tropes and character backgrounds.

Years ago DC comics started doing things called "Elseworlds" – books of alternate ideas, histories, pasts, and futures of various characters.  These Elseworlds series mixed familiar and unfamiliar elements, and for my money, were often fascinating.  Batman as a priest fighting a corrupt theocracy?  A sword-and-sorcery Justice League?  Sign me up.

I think some of our beloved figures are entering an age of "mild" Elseworlds.

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Go Farther: Fiction Needs Irrelevance

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When we build a world for our fictions, games, and shows, we construct cultures.  Cultures explain why people do what they do, how they think, why they eat, how they war, how they make peace, and more.  Culture is unavoidable when you make a setting – one could even argue that characters are often expressions of their cultures.

When we build these cultures we're often thinking about important things.  We want to know why characters believe as they do.  We want to explain why characters go where they go and do what they do.  We want to explain why magic is the prerogative of the ruling class, why there's a different language spoken on this distant space station, and so on.  We want to explain what matters – in short, cultures explain the Big Plot.

This is short-sighted.

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Frustration Friday: To Not Forget

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Recently I was thinking about the Great Recession, which is not unusual for me, and realized that some day, years from now, it will end.  Then, I thought, I can get beyond it, get it out of my mind . . .

 . .  and I realized I was looking forward to forgetting about the Great Recession.  I was looking forward to the days I was no longer worrying about my friends and their jobs.  I was looking forward to no longer analyzing the impacts of these terrible times on our economy, our psychology, and our souls.  I was looking forward to forgetting.

I realized then and there, I was wrong.  I should not forget it.  Ever.

Neither should you and yours, neither should anyone.

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