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tyr story blatherings...
If I do NaNo this year it'll be the Tyr story. (IF.) The issue there being I need to plot it out first, and I still don't know how to start it.
I like the way I wrote it the first time, with Tyr and Dian checking out his new, really ugly house. Though the rest was really dragging on and nothing much happened, which really does need fixing.
Issues I've got:
If I change things so the military is the one that introduces people leaving the program to the local werewolves... (not just randomly running into each other!) how does it happen? What/How/When? Would it kill the suspense? How much of the original story can I keep, where should I start trimming? Should I just throw out the first beginning and start over entirely? In that case, with what? argh.
(though I guess I could have a little something mentioned about how military people are surprised to see Dian there; he kinda said/they kinda understood that he was going to go home and go feral and do a suicide by cop thing, but Tyr invited him to stay with him and he just went "okay why not, I haven't got anything better to do with my time atm". Also maybe something about how... okay, a conflict in the pack is that the current alpha is OLD. He looks fifty-five, he's actually pushing a hundred or so, and he'd love to retire, but there's several candidates and he really doesn't want it to be done like they did in the middle ages with a fight to the death, there's few enough of them already and he really doesn't want to look too feral now that the human military knows they exist, so he's pushing the good doggies angle. So he's kinda seeing which of the candidates he can train the best into being a good alpha and being civil with humans. He could bring the two (three?) of them with him to get them used to dealing with officials/humans, so things might be tense and plotty straight from the start since no one else would know why they're here save for as backup. HMMMMMMMM.)
Which brings me to...
I need antagonists who aren't straw men. More specifically, I need other candidates for alpha male in the local pack, who Tyr would have reasons to go against, to go "okay I don't really want to be alpha but you'd be really horrible at it so I can't let you", but I don't want those people to be merely one-dimensionally pathetic (no one'd respect them enough that they'd be considered for the position in the first place!) or easily summarized as evil/narrow-minded/wantonly cruel/etc.
(note, they won't be the main antagonists. More like, idk, mid-bosses? XD)
Problem is right now the only alpha candidate I really have is a guy who so far is nothing but a hispanic hot-blooded wifebeater stereotype and AUGH NO. He needs redeeming qualities. Maybe he has good reasons to be so "we should NOT be dealing with humans!!!" (the issue there is that he also believes all women of babymaking age should be doing so, because if you don't bring humans in you've got to renew the pack in other ways, and this being mysoginistic and controlling, it pushes my "nothing about this guy is redeemable ever" buttons, which then keep him annoyingly one-dimensional.) Maybe he's from a very long line/old pack and to him being a werewolf is not just about transforming, there's all that tradition behind it... And maybe he also has very valid concerns about abuse by the human government and feels very unsafe/threatened now that they know what to look for to find the packs, when for centuries their survival depended on their ability to blend in.
I was thinking the second candidate could be less strong but more reasonable, but a way to make hispano guy less cliche would be to have him less strong, but smarter. Just not as calm and reasonable as the other guy and with biases that would foul that, but it might make for an interesting dynamic. Also the old alpha guy could despair because if only he could learn to stop being all Proud Warrior Race head-in-his-ass and anti-human, pro-segregation (which is not possible anymore now they've been outed to the government!) he'd make a great alpha.
Second candidate could be a nice, reasonable guy, but ... someone who'd be all for cooperating with humans so the humans don't feel they have to destroy them, that he ends up too conciliatory for an alpha, whose first responsibility is to protect his pack from anything, not to encourage them to domesticate themselves until they're utterly cowed. (his platform could be Adaptation = Survival!! and Hispano Guy's could be "Better Die On Your Feet Than Live On Your Knees!" XD)
And I could have a woman as the third candidate! But I have no idea what I'd do with her, and I really don't want to make Second Candidate a chick, because that'd really send the wrong message. >__> Especially since a lot of packs are more sexist than human society -- being at war for so long, about 1/4th of the human troops are women, though they rarely get front lines assignments, and they do have mandatory service for a year or two just as the guys do. They just aren't encouraged to stay as long as most men, because it's all well and good to protect their species but someone also needs to, y'know, propagate it. So there's a bit of a Samurai thing in that a man is with the outside attackers, and a woman stays behind, but to defend the castle, not just to hide. (it's still not perfect equality, mind, and even that mentality can hide some "you stay behind, we'll handle it and won't need you" patronizing bullshit, but ideally, the men are the first line of defense, but the women are the last.)
(my reasoning re: sexism in werewolves: in a non-were wolf pack, females can be pretty high in the hierarchy because a female wolf weighs almost as much as a male and isn't proportionally weaker and has just as many teeth as he does, there's not as much dimorphism as with humans, but in here it's pretty much the human side of the equation and their panic about secrecy/reproduction issues that fucked up the werewolf packs and made them want/need to control their women.)
The two guys don't get why she wants to be alpha on her own, because as a woman she could add her strength to the guy she wants to choose, and they'd rule the pack together as an alpha couple! And she'd totes be a good influence on her mate, of COURSE, so that'd make them more likely to be chosen by Old!Current-Alpha!Guy.
And she's all fuck you guys, no.
I think she's also young, so she isn't considered very seriously for the position, but OldAlpha, being quite manipulative, is using her as a foil to shape the other two in appropriate directions, just like he will later use Tyr. I wonder if maybe she doesn't also find that the government making tons of new weres is very beneficial for their species' survival! Or maybe I could give that idea to SecondGuy, because most Black Ops guys who got the treatment will never be were-anything but bugfuck crazy, and that's really not the attitude you want to promote positive views.
The issue with a military-chaperoned meeting is that there's no OMG! reveal scene like meeting by chance/accident had, which was really fun to play with. Hrrrm. Sadness. But the random meeting thing was also a bit contrived, anyway. I need to make this scene less generic in my mind than "okay, they'll just get a conference room and have a little meeting." It might be more logical for the characters to choose, but as a scene in a story it'll need more sparks than that if it wants to be anything but boring. >___> (especially since if the old alpha is there, HispanoGuy won't start a fight! This is v. sad. Maybe he can go against Xiang ahahahahaha KICK HIS ASS, LIN. >D)
Okay, I'm running out of thinky thoughts for today. I keep having new plot ideas, oh god, how am I going to stuff it all into a single story?
I like the way I wrote it the first time, with Tyr and Dian checking out his new, really ugly house. Though the rest was really dragging on and nothing much happened, which really does need fixing.
Issues I've got:
If I change things so the military is the one that introduces people leaving the program to the local werewolves... (not just randomly running into each other!) how does it happen? What/How/When? Would it kill the suspense? How much of the original story can I keep, where should I start trimming? Should I just throw out the first beginning and start over entirely? In that case, with what? argh.
(though I guess I could have a little something mentioned about how military people are surprised to see Dian there; he kinda said/they kinda understood that he was going to go home and go feral and do a suicide by cop thing, but Tyr invited him to stay with him and he just went "okay why not, I haven't got anything better to do with my time atm". Also maybe something about how... okay, a conflict in the pack is that the current alpha is OLD. He looks fifty-five, he's actually pushing a hundred or so, and he'd love to retire, but there's several candidates and he really doesn't want it to be done like they did in the middle ages with a fight to the death, there's few enough of them already and he really doesn't want to look too feral now that the human military knows they exist, so he's pushing the good doggies angle. So he's kinda seeing which of the candidates he can train the best into being a good alpha and being civil with humans. He could bring the two (three?) of them with him to get them used to dealing with officials/humans, so things might be tense and plotty straight from the start since no one else would know why they're here save for as backup. HMMMMMMMM.)
Which brings me to...
I need antagonists who aren't straw men. More specifically, I need other candidates for alpha male in the local pack, who Tyr would have reasons to go against, to go "okay I don't really want to be alpha but you'd be really horrible at it so I can't let you", but I don't want those people to be merely one-dimensionally pathetic (no one'd respect them enough that they'd be considered for the position in the first place!) or easily summarized as evil/narrow-minded/wantonly cruel/etc.
(note, they won't be the main antagonists. More like, idk, mid-bosses? XD)
Problem is right now the only alpha candidate I really have is a guy who so far is nothing but a hispanic hot-blooded wifebeater stereotype and AUGH NO. He needs redeeming qualities. Maybe he has good reasons to be so "we should NOT be dealing with humans!!!" (the issue there is that he also believes all women of babymaking age should be doing so, because if you don't bring humans in you've got to renew the pack in other ways, and this being mysoginistic and controlling, it pushes my "nothing about this guy is redeemable ever" buttons, which then keep him annoyingly one-dimensional.) Maybe he's from a very long line/old pack and to him being a werewolf is not just about transforming, there's all that tradition behind it... And maybe he also has very valid concerns about abuse by the human government and feels very unsafe/threatened now that they know what to look for to find the packs, when for centuries their survival depended on their ability to blend in.
I was thinking the second candidate could be less strong but more reasonable, but a way to make hispano guy less cliche would be to have him less strong, but smarter. Just not as calm and reasonable as the other guy and with biases that would foul that, but it might make for an interesting dynamic. Also the old alpha guy could despair because if only he could learn to stop being all Proud Warrior Race head-in-his-ass and anti-human, pro-segregation (which is not possible anymore now they've been outed to the government!) he'd make a great alpha.
Second candidate could be a nice, reasonable guy, but ... someone who'd be all for cooperating with humans so the humans don't feel they have to destroy them, that he ends up too conciliatory for an alpha, whose first responsibility is to protect his pack from anything, not to encourage them to domesticate themselves until they're utterly cowed. (his platform could be Adaptation = Survival!! and Hispano Guy's could be "Better Die On Your Feet Than Live On Your Knees!" XD)
And I could have a woman as the third candidate! But I have no idea what I'd do with her, and I really don't want to make Second Candidate a chick, because that'd really send the wrong message. >__> Especially since a lot of packs are more sexist than human society -- being at war for so long, about 1/4th of the human troops are women, though they rarely get front lines assignments, and they do have mandatory service for a year or two just as the guys do. They just aren't encouraged to stay as long as most men, because it's all well and good to protect their species but someone also needs to, y'know, propagate it. So there's a bit of a Samurai thing in that a man is with the outside attackers, and a woman stays behind, but to defend the castle, not just to hide. (it's still not perfect equality, mind, and even that mentality can hide some "you stay behind, we'll handle it and won't need you" patronizing bullshit, but ideally, the men are the first line of defense, but the women are the last.)
(my reasoning re: sexism in werewolves: in a non-were wolf pack, females can be pretty high in the hierarchy because a female wolf weighs almost as much as a male and isn't proportionally weaker and has just as many teeth as he does, there's not as much dimorphism as with humans, but in here it's pretty much the human side of the equation and their panic about secrecy/reproduction issues that fucked up the werewolf packs and made them want/need to control their women.)
The two guys don't get why she wants to be alpha on her own, because as a woman she could add her strength to the guy she wants to choose, and they'd rule the pack together as an alpha couple! And she'd totes be a good influence on her mate, of COURSE, so that'd make them more likely to be chosen by Old!Current-Alpha!Guy.
And she's all fuck you guys, no.
I think she's also young, so she isn't considered very seriously for the position, but OldAlpha, being quite manipulative, is using her as a foil to shape the other two in appropriate directions, just like he will later use Tyr. I wonder if maybe she doesn't also find that the government making tons of new weres is very beneficial for their species' survival! Or maybe I could give that idea to SecondGuy, because most Black Ops guys who got the treatment will never be were-anything but bugfuck crazy, and that's really not the attitude you want to promote positive views.
The issue with a military-chaperoned meeting is that there's no OMG! reveal scene like meeting by chance/accident had, which was really fun to play with. Hrrrm. Sadness. But the random meeting thing was also a bit contrived, anyway. I need to make this scene less generic in my mind than "okay, they'll just get a conference room and have a little meeting." It might be more logical for the characters to choose, but as a scene in a story it'll need more sparks than that if it wants to be anything but boring. >___> (especially since if the old alpha is there, HispanoGuy won't start a fight! This is v. sad. Maybe he can go against Xiang ahahahahaha KICK HIS ASS, LIN. >D)
Okay, I'm running out of thinky thoughts for today. I keep having new plot ideas, oh god, how am I going to stuff it all into a single story?