The review is about another movie still in theatres, so I’ll try to avoid spoilers as much as possible.

The idea of a heart-warming story about a boy and his dog is practically cliché.  From Rin Tin Tin to Lassie to Boxey and Muffet on the original Battlestar Galactica, people have sat and watched stories where boy and dog save the day.  However, only Ted Key flipped the relationship around.

Peabody’s Improbable History started in 1959 as a series of short cartoons as part of The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show*.  In each cartoon, Mr. Peabody, a brilliant dog capable of building a time machine, took his pet boy Sherman to a historical event using the WABAC Machine.  The event would never be going as the history books said, though.  There was always some problem that needed correcting, and Mr. Peabody was just the dog to help.  Each short would end after the problem was solved and after Mr. Peabody quipped a pun related to what happened.

In 2002, Rob Minkoff decided to bring back Mr. Peabody and his boy Sherman.  After twelve years of development, caused in part by a similiarity to the first Despicable Me movie, Mr. Peabody and Sherman was released.  The movie took the core concept of the original shorts, the trips taken by the main characters in the WABAC Machine, and expanded it, adding details to not just the world around Mr. Peabody and Sherman but the relations between the two.  The movie starts with a nod to the original Peabody’s Improbable History with a trip to pre-Reign of Terror** France to visit Marie Antoinette.  After a misunderstanding that escalates to revolution, Mr. Peabody extricates both Sherman and himself to return home after quipping a pun.  All in all, a bang up job where nobody lost their head.

The movie continues, showing Sherman’s first day at school and dealing with one of the more dreaded beings ever to set foot on Earth, a girl named Penny.  Things don’t go well, leading to Sherman biting Penny, setting off a chain of events that brings in Mrs. Grunion, a Dolores Umbridge-style antagonist.  Grunion wants to separate dog and boy.  In an effort to work things out with Penny’s family, Mr. Peabody invites them over for dinner to discuss the events.  While Peabody charms Paul and Patty Peterson, Sherman gets to show Penny around, with strict orders to not show her the WABAC Machine.  Naturally, Sherman shows Penny the WABAC Machine, starting the romp through history, meeting luminaries such as Tutankhamen, Agamemnon, and Leonardo da Vinci.

Between 1959 and 2014, a lot has changed in the world of animation.  Computers, which were room-sized, tape-driven monstrosities with minimal graphics capability in 1959, are integral to animation today.  Audiences expect more in the relationships between characters.  Smoking is forbidden; the pipe-smoking Mr. Peabody of 1959 just wouldn’t be shown.  Casual cruelty, especially towards children, is also frowned upon.  The acceptable quality of animation has also changed; for a feature film, backgrounds can no longer be sketched in or repeated on a loop.

The other huge jump from Peabody’s Improbable History to Mr. Peabody and Sherman is running time.  Peabody’s Improbable History was part of a 22 minute episode of The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends, so it never took more than four to five minutes.  Mr. Peabody and Sherman runs 92 minutes; the movie just can’t rely on the old formula to work.

The scriptwriters were up for the task.  They took the core of Peabody’s Improbable History and used it as the foundation for the movie.  It didn’t matter if part of the audience was too young to have ever seen the shorts; the movie starts off with an extended version that would fit well in the original’s run.  The movie then expands, discovering and developing the relationship between dog and boy, and between Mr. Peabody and Sherman with the rest of the world around them, all without sacrificing the humour Peabody’s Improbable History was known for.  Sure, there may be a fart joke or two, but anyone who knows of history, of drama, and even of psychology will get the humour.  You have to admire a movie that works in a subtle Oedipus complex gag into a scene inside the Trojan Horse.

Does Mr. Peabody and Sherman work as an adaptation?  Yes.  The script built on top of the original cartoon and expanded without sacrificing what made Peabody’s Improbable History memorable.

Next week, The Mechanic.

* Also known as Rocky and His Friends among others, depending on the syndicator.
** Five minutes before to the Reign of Terror.

Well as mentioned I’d gotten behind on my plans for generators when I got sick and busy.  However, I’d had a chance to take some notes for more silly generators, and here’s one for you!

After seeing the premiere of “Guardians of the Galaxy” I admit I got enthused for Rocket Raccoon.  However why should we restrict ourselves to one gun-toting Uplifted animal?  So I created the Action Animal Generator to create characters like these:

[Way With Worlds appears at Seventh Sanctum, MuseHack, and Ongoing Worlds]

So let’s talk about creating and writing religions in your world. You may now start panicking.

Creating religions is challenging,as we all know. That sense of challenge, the burden, the awareness of all the effort it takes can bring us down in our world building efforts. Chances are even mention this is giving you flashbacks.

So before we explore writing religions and creating religions, I want to cover the challenges we world builders face – and discuss overcoming them. Will I cover all possible cases? No theres only so much I can do or remember, swear to . . .

. . . er anyway, lets’ go on and look a some of the challenges facing writing religion and common traps.

But First . . . (more…)

First of all, I’m here – though work, allergies, and a cold hit me really, really hard.  It has been a crazy few weeks.

So, first of all, you’ve seen we’ve got a new writer, who is quite promising – in fact I’m already seeing about sharing him with Ongoing Worlds.  We always have room for more!

Secondly, the generators are definitely behind.  I hope to have more time starting next month, but that is the way it goes.  Fortunately I have some light ones in various states, so I may apply those.  But frankly, the last few weeks were not kind and I had to prioritize.  Let’s just say two of the ideas are inspired by “Guardians of the Galaxy” and I’ll let you panic over that.

Way With Worlds on the other hand is my big focus as it’s just pouring itself onto posts.  THis is a blast and I’m actually starting to write it in chunks – I learned a lot in 15 years and it’s fun sharing it.

Now at some point it may end – I figure if nothing else I’ll have dumped it out of my brain, or may take it to a Q&A column or something.  But that’s . . . probably a year away, give or take.

As noted, and I will repeat this to be honest, I will probably bundle the final columns up into a book and do a final edit/rewrite/addition/improvement.  Because I know there are folks that read and reread them and printed them out.  I’d like to leave something “offical,” organized, printed, and with a cool cover!

OK that’s it for now.  I’m gonna relax, maybe slam some allergy meds, and get back to it . .

– Steven Savage

 

 

Television series exist at the whim of a programming exec.  Series not pulling in the right audience for advertisers get pulled, sometimes within weeks of the pilot airing.  There have been times when the number of weeks is less than one.  One case in Austrailia had the show pulled during airing.

The longer a series lasts, the more fans it picks up, through word of mouth or even accidentally catching an episode.  If you’ve been following MuseHack or any site through Crossroads Alpha for any length of time, you’ll know that fans can get creative when supporting a series.  This was as true with the original Star Trek as it was with Veronica Mars.  What Star Trek fans didn’t have available to them was Kickstarter.

Veronica Mars aired first on UPN then on the CW after UPN merged with the WB network, lasting three seasons from 2004 to 2007.  Sixty-four episodes, one fewer than traditionally needed for syndication, chronicled the life of the titular character in a film noir homage.  Each season had its own mystery arc, with Veronica working on smaller cases each episode as well.  Veronica was also an outsider in her school, the fallout of her father, as sherriff, trying to arrest a prominent Neptune, California, billionaire for the murder of one of Veronica’s friends.  When her father became a private investigator, Veronica helped out, and took advantage of the skills she picked up to find her friend’s murderer.

Over the course of the three seasons, Veronica gained close friends and solved cases.  The series ended with her having to make a difficult decision – leave the wretched hive of scum, villainy, and corruption known as Neptune or stay as a licensed detective herself.

Veronica’s choice was never shown.  The series was cancelled after the third season, though work had been done for a potential fourth that would have seen Veronica as a rookie FBI agent.  Fans wanted more.  The Mars bar campaign saw ten thousand of the candy bars sent to CBS headquarters.  However, the fate of the show was sealed.  Being on a fifth network that had to merge to survive took its toll.

All was not lost.  The creator, Rob Thomas, had written a Veronica Mars movie script.  CBS, one of the co-owners of the CW along with Warner Bros, passed on the idea.  However, a new player had arrived.  Kickstarter gave people a chance to directly fund projects; money would only change hands if the donations reached the dollar value required set by the creators.  All Kickstarter campaigns last thrity days, to give projects enough time to get the word out and drum up support.  When the Veronica Mars movie went to Kickstarter, the $2 million goal was reached within 11 hours.  Fans wanted the movie.  The studios, seeing the interest, added to the funding and greenlit the movie.

The movie was released as a limited engagement, on a smaller number of screens than the typical release.  At the same time, the movie was available for digital download.  Opening night saw theatres sold out of tickets.  With nine years between the end of the series and the movie opening, could the movie adapt to the time gap?

Adapting a TV series to a movie involves some growing pains.  With Veronica Mars, there is an added complexity.  Many adapted TV shows become just longer episodes, not really taking advantage of the new format.  Fans can be vocal about what they want, but may not be aware of what they truly desire; it’s a delicate act balancing the familiar and the unexpected.  Veronica‘s added complication is the lack of time for the season-long arc.  Can the script handle needing to be both longer and shorter while still being Veronica Mars?

To appease the fan need for the familiar, the movie brought back many familiar faces.  Along with Kristen Bell, Veronica herself, the movie reunited her with Jason Dohring, Tina Majorino, Percy Daggs III, Francis Capra, Krysten Ritter, Chris Lowell, Daran Norris, Ken Marino, Ryan Hansen, and Erinco Colantoni.  Veronica gets dragged back to the wrteched hive after one of her Neptune friends is accused of murder before the weekend that the Neptune High School reunion takes place.  The reunion acts as the perfect metaphor for the movie; almost ten years have past since fans last saw the characters.  Who would they be now?  Almost every character* had changed in surprising ways, the unexpected that the fans also want.

The core of the TV series was the drama that Veronica herself went through, the changed lives, even hers, in the wake of her investigations.  Without that core, the Veronica Mars movie could just be the Betty Jupiter film.  Rob Thomas, though, knew that core and used it as the base to build the rest of the movie on.  Few characters get through the movie unscathed, and even Veronica herself gets caught in her own wake.

With the script getting to the heart of what made Veronica Mars a popular hit, even a cult classic, the adaptation to the big screen allowed fans to return to Neptune and enjoy a proper Veronica Mars story, gaining from the change in format without losing anything in translation.

Next week, Mr. Peabody and Sherman.

* There’s always that one person who doesn’t appear that he has left high school.  For Veronica Mars, that person is Dick Cassavetes, played by Ryan Hansen.

[Way With Worlds appears at Seventh Sanctum, MuseHack, and Ongoing Worlds]

We’ve all had those moments where we’re just not inspired to build our world – or in writing in general. Other times we’re inspired but it’s actually not coming together, which is somehow worse. I imagine many a writer feels they exist inside a permanent form of writer’s block from which they escape only momentarily until their lack of creative forces drag them back to their prison.

With “World Blockage” it’s exceptionally daunting because worldbuilding is a complex process. A single idea or clever exercise may not spawn new continents or languages. An hour of effort may yield little results because the parts just won’t come together. It’s just as maddening as writer’s block, and you need something to jumpstart it.

You need inspiration – inspiration to build worlds. (more…)

Tie-ins are a hard fit for Lost in Translation.  While tie-ins have appeared in the past, notably My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic and the Richard Castle Nikki Heat novels, they are usually set aside for various reasons.  However, The LEGO Movie created a dilemma.  The film fell neatly into the gap between tie-in and adaptation.  After seeing the movie, I really wanted to get some LEGO bricks to play with, but still felt like I had watched an awesome film that took into account the nature of the toy.  Thus, the need to work out the nature of a tie-in work.

One of the views of tie-in works comes from advertising.  A work is created to sell a product.  Prior to the 1980s, works of this nature were seen as strictly advertising and were heavily restricted in what could and could not be shown.  The regulations were loosened in during the Reagan administration in the US, paving the way for TV shows such as Transformers, Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future, Jem and the Holograms, and MLP:FIM.  While they could be aired, the product they were based on could not be advertised during their time slots.  In the 80s, with Transformers and G.I. Joe, there was also Lazer Tag Academy and Pac-Man; quality was uneven.  The memorable series treated the work as more than just advertising, elevating them above the pack.

The other main view of tie-works is the expanded universe.  Star Trek and Star Wars are the exemplars here.  Both have had novels, comics, and spin-off animated series.  With Star Wars, the universe expanded by the extra material is considered canon, to one degree or another.*  Paramount, however, does not consider the Star Trek expanded universe as canon, with a few exceptions.  That difference aside, the main thrust with the tie-in works was to fill a demand by fans for more, particularly during the years where no more official work was expected.  The Nikki Heat books fall into this category, being a tie-in to the TV series Castle, though in an unexpected manner.

The core element in both of the above is that the original creators, be they toy company or studio, are providing the impetus for the new works to be created in support of the original.  Captain Power was meant to be part of an interactive toy, yet the stories delved into the nature of humanity and ended on a powerful note involving the death of one of the main characters.**  With adaptations, the original work is moved to a different medium, typically book to movie like the Harry Potter series.  Remakes and reboots can be done by the original studio, as what happened with Star Trek: The Next Generation, but are meant to stand on their own, not support the original.

This isn’t to say that tie-ins are inferior works.  Captain Power, as mentioned above, became a cult hit as viewers realized the depth of the work.  MLP:FIM became an Internet sensation because Lauren Faust wanted to make sure that the family show would be appreciated by the entire family.  The Richard Castle novels, while based on the characters in Castle, are filtered through the titular character’s writing, allowing a fictional novelist to publish real books.  In each of these cases, and in many more, the tie-in work goes beyond just supporting the original and becomes a work of its own merit.  People don’t need the interactive starfighter to enjoy Captain Power, nor a pony for MLP:FIM, nor even watch Castle to enjoy a Nikki Heat book.

Will Lost in Translation look at tie-in works in the future?  The answer is a definite “maybe”.  The tie-in will have to transcend its nature and demonstrate that it can stand on its own.

Next week, Veronica Mars.

* West End Games’ Star Wars Sourcebook, published in 1987 and updated for the role-playing game’s second edition in 1994, has been used by the creative team of Star Wars: The Clone Wars.  West End Games went bankrupt in 1998.
** Captain Power is being remade as Phoenix Rising, an hour-long science fiction drama, thanks to the original becoming a cult hit outside the target demographic.

Hello, my name is Michał Solański (mostly known around the web as Solarius Scorch) and this is my second article on Seventh Sanctum. Our benevolent host Steven Savage was kind enough to invite me to open my own article series called “Bag of Tricks”, in which I will suggest a number of plot ideas and, well, tricks for game masters. Each article will cover a different RPG genre by addressing one particular problem or aspect — sometimes central to the genre, sometimes just interesting enough to be discussed. I hope you shall find it useful, or at least entertaining to some extent.

This initial article covers heroic fantasy, though it may be somewhat applicable to other fantasy genres featuring thematic heroes and individual combat.

Introduction

Shōnen is a very popular manga and anime genre, including such titles as Naruto, Bleach, One Piece, Dragon Ball or Fairy Tail (and if you include its close relative, seinen, also series like Ninja Scroll or Basilisk). Shōnen stories usually feature adventures of absurdly powerful warriors, mixed with typical middle school level shenanigans and significant amounts of fanservice. Therefore the shōnen genre appeals to nearly all male teenagers (which means boys 12 to 65 years old), and the characters themselves also attract hordes of fangirls. Fanservice aside, these titles are watched for one major reason: fighting scenes! Most shōnen series are extremely silly, but that’s not the point at all; what counts is fighting with swords (or kunai, naginatas, bare fists — mark your favourite answer if you like these things). And this is what makes them watchable.

As a genre that specializes in martial action, shōnen developed a number of rather interesting means of heating up scenes to the max. Naturally, some of them are just camera work and other audiovisual methods, but since this column is about role-playing games, let’s have a look at plot-related tropes that make shōnen fights unique. After all, the art of game mastering is largely an art of theft, all in order to enrich your players’ experience during the weekly gorefest.

It should be pretty clear by now that this little article is most useful for heroic fantasy games, where player characters can and will fight, fight, fight the power! Call of Cthulhu is unlikely to apply here, but on the other hand my old eyes have seen things I once considered unimaginable…

Impassable

Some enemies simply cannot be beaten, period. However, their invincibility doesn’t originate simply from their overwhelming might, or “high enough level”, but from some particular property they have — something that gives them the ability to easily and leisurely negate all attacks launched at them. The most straightforward examples of such abilities are defensive powers, like instant dematerialization (rendering the user able to ignore strikes and go through walls), armour that cannot be punctured in battle conditions, or good old total invisibility. More advanced forms of Impassability may be based on pretty much anything, starting with rapid cloning to commanding air currents to the ability to absorb attacks as raw energy. It doesn’t matter how exactly Impassability works, what matters is that this opponent is absolutely impossible to overcome, unless they do something really stupid — and you know they won’t…

How can we use such an opponent in our adventure? Naturally, its main use is to force the players to come up with a plan to win against them despite each normal attack being mercilessly nullified (otherwise it wouldn’t be an Impassable enemy after all). Ideally, in order to bring down this one foe, the characters would have to use their special abilities creatively, but it’s not really necessary — getting them to come up with an interesting, non-obvious idea is what really counts.

Let’s consider a simple example: the opponent has placed a network of magical portals on the battlefield, between which he can freely travel in a blink of the eye, and each teleportation also provides instantaneous healing; moreover, these portals cannot be destroyed without some advanced magic that the party doesn’t have. Such an opponent cannot realistically be vanquished by normal means, unless with one extremely strong and accurate attack that would be way beyond the party’s hopes.

However, understanding the nature of the Impassability and some creative use of combat terrain can still turn the tides of battle: for example, the heroes might succeed in using the portal network for sending a magical discharge which will temporarily stun the enemy (preferably after some diversion). Or perhaps after an appropriately long (and probably painful) observation they will find some sort of weakness in the enemy technique, eg. for a fraction of a second after teleportation he is defenceless? This challenge may prove to be really difficult to your players, but remember that nothing compares to the wonderful feeling of showing someone who considers themselves invincible that they were wrong after all.

Another variant of this idea, perhaps easier on the players  — but equally interesting — is pitching two Impassable warriors against each other (naturally, at least one of them is likely to be a player character). Both combatants realize that they are unable to hurt each other just like that, because, say, one of them is protected by a flawless armour, while the other has insane regeneration rate and also can absorb matter into their own body.

Winning will be a tough nut to crack for both of them; merely looking for an opening will probably take most of the duel, but with some decent narration, this struggle can make the player in question sweat a lot. If it’s the player character who has the armour and their enemy is the one regenerating, a good idea would be to start by separating the opponent from the ground to deny them access to regeneration material — but how to do this? Conversely, their opponent will look for a way to find a way to win that doesn’t involve piercing through the opponent’s armour — maybe they could be buried alive or electrocuted? Each combatant will therefore keep looking for a way to overcome the other’s absolute defence, while trying to predict how their own absolute defence might be rendered ineffective. The one to find and use the method first will be the winner.

Wrong place, wrong enemy

Let’s have a look at another common shōnen plot. Many players have a tendency of getting used to one particular fighting method that they use against absolutely everyone, because for some reason it simply is the most efficient. In its most primitive version it’s just the “I cut them with my sword, because I have it at +5”, but it may also refer to a particular spell, manoeuvre or special ability, depending on the setting and mechanics. Such a trademark move is nothing bad per se, it can even be quite helpful in establishing the character’s image (most protagonists featured in anime for teenagers also have one standard combat technique to use on most foes), but in the long run it may get a little boring. Especially if half of the PCs are using the exact same move. Let’s spice things up from time to time, shall we?

What do I have in mind? It’s simple: let’s put our hero in a situation where using his default power is impossible or inefficient. Do they rely upon their speed and agility in combat? Make them fight on slippery ground where sudden movement is out of the question (if we’re feeling extra mean, let’s give the enemy an ability or equipment to ignore such terrain hazards). Do they solve everything with a fireball? Make them fight underwater. Are they a powerful psionic, able to attack minds directly? Throw mindless robots at them. And so on, et cetera.

As you probably can see, such decisions’ only goal is to knock the player off their everyday routine: denied their trademark move, they will have to fall back to other abilities (perhaps considered of little use before), and most of all to think hard on what to do. But there is also another reason why such a plot idea can be beneficial: although abilities that are written on a character sheet and meticulously improved session to session are very fun (because it’s fulfilling and satisfying to use them), we only really get to know them when we learn of their limitations. A player who loves their fireball spell is unlikely to no longer like it if they can’t use it for once; but if carefully prodded, they may start to like it even more, because it becomes more substantial — a specialist’s trusted tool instead of a simple problem-solving button.

Nevertheless, this trick should be used sensibly — otherwise the player is likely to interpret it not as an interesting plot element, but rather as common pettiness on the game master’s side. It should also be used sparingly, because it’s supposed to be an exceptional situation after all, one removed from everyday experience. Still, watching a fire mage frantically searching through their pockets for that cheap water spell scroll they would never use normally is quality entertainment for the entire party (and certainly for the game master).

A motif with a person

When considering supervillains and many shōnen heroes, it is easy to identify some sort of a motif that is attached to nearly all of them and often determines their basic attributes — looks, equipment and special powers. These powers, or some central aspect of them, is what more often than not appears to be the character’s core: it seems to conceptually determine their other features. For example Kimimarō from Naruto is able to transform his own bones (which allows him to turn his bones into blades protruding from his skin), therefore his body is frail, his complexion pale, and his eyes dead. Similarly, Fairy Tail protagonist Natsu, being an apprentice of a dragon with fire- based powers, has flame-like hair, sharp teeth and explosive temper. Or compare Medusa from Soul Eater, known for her affinity for snakes, has yellow eyes with vertical slits and a very expressive tongue. While not every shōnen character has their motif, even not having one can also be significant in some way, as it may denote someone really special.

How exactly does it relate to role-playing? Such a motif is not very likely to be crucial to battle tactics or contents of a campaign, but certainly is a comfortable and easy method of creating non-player characters that players will remember. Such a move may also have beneficial effects on the conceptual coherence of an adventure, helping introduce some symbolics to it (more or less unsubtly). How directly we should use this idea depends of course on our party’s sophistication, who may or may not be impressed with such motif characters, so let’s not get carried away here. However, I guarantee that even if your players are deadly serious people, who consider something like a snake-man to be utterly pathetic, they are still bound to appreciate the fact that a mysterious knight that turned out to have a snake-like tongue had been seen much earlier with a shield depicting a snake, and not, say, a badger.

Speaking of the rather important issue of potential laughableness: why would anyone walk around in some bizarre outfit, and one related to their powers to boot? Well, such a hero (or villain) should be designed so that such clothes would be beneficial or necessary to their profile, or at least neutral. If for example our subject commands metal, it wouldn’t be weird for them to wear heavy armour all the time and be known to the world as the Iron Count (don’t forget to give them steel-coloured eyes). Similarly, it would be logical for an adept of martial arts taught by Secret Masters of the Sun who Reign the Light to wear a robe embroidered with sun symbols, showing their pride and reverence for this tradition, and perhaps to abuse figures of speech related to sun or daylight. Like I mentioned before, the level of subtlety should be chosen according to our players to avoid excessive campiness, but it’s almost always good to use such ideas for one simple reason: in shōnen series, only common thugs and other small fries wear civilian clothes, important characters hardly ever do.

Eventually, it should be said that motifs have a tendency to pass from a master to a pupil, from an ancestor to a descendant (particularly obvious in Naruto, but fairly prevalent across the genre). Style imitation is not only a matter of practicality (logically, a pupil will know the same techniques as their teacher), but it is also a sign of the pupil’s loyalty and pride. It is particularly important if the master was met with an untimely end, and their student takes upon themselves the responsibility for continuation of their master’s work.

This mechanism in itself can be exploited by game masters in several ways: for example let’s assume that the party needs to find a famous hero, who is known to wear long coat with a red rune of fire and an inquisitorial hat with a feather, which in the given setting is quite an exotic outfit. When they finally succeed in finding this person, it turns out that the guy is not only much younger than expected, but there are also additional issues (examples: the youngster can’t really do much; the youngster can do a lot, but mistakenly blames the party for killing their master; the youngster works for the opposite side of the conflict; etc.). Such plot hooks can easily result in scenes that are either comedic or dramatic, whatever suits you best.

Wrap-up

And so we’ve reached the end of this little article. I have briefly described just three of the many dead horse shōnen tropes that with minimal effort can be translated to the language of role playing games and included in your bag of plot tricks. Naturally, this little list is quite far from completion, and many readers are bound to come up with more ideas. Why don’t you share them in the comment section below? Dattebayo!

[Way With Worlds appears at Seventh Sanctum, MuseHack, and Ongoing Worlds]

There you are, innocently writing along, and you look back on some of your published stories, perhaps to review, perhaps for fun, perhaps to see what past atrocities you committed on your language of choice. While doing this, you then see that which we all fear, the specter that haunts so many writers.

A continuity error.

Maybe it’s a spell working differently than it does later in your narrative, or you got a location wrong in some dialogue, or whatever. Something didn’t happen the way it should, its a violation of your continuity, and its been written and you can’t really take it out because its buried in the rest of the story and the world. Perhaps even your current works rely on that error, which is exceptionally humiliating and terrifying.

If you’re a continuity/setting fanatic like me, itís like having someone pour icewater over your heart. You violated your world, you messed up, you forgot, and probably you botched up future plots. Itís a terrible feeling of impotence, stupidity, and dread, a real cocktail of anguish.

Sure it happens to everyone, but right at that moment everyone is you.

In the words of a certain computerized book, Don’t Panic. Here’s some techniques to help you deal with what you do when you find you got your world wrong.

Did You Actually Make A Mistake?

First of all, you may find your mistake wasn’t one. Review your continuity, review the story. You may have written something that you knew subconsciously and forgot consciously. Or it may not even be a mistake when reviewed.

If you’re a jumpy writer, you can easily make the wrong assumption about things. I’ve seen it happens.

Make sure you’ve actually got a problem because trying to fix a non-problem can make things worse – like running off to fix the error that isn’t in your next story or game and building a huge plot around it. You’ll only complicate matters, and probably make real mistakes.

Is It A Matter Of Perspective?

The problem may be a problem – but only in a matter of perspective. A character may have said something wrong, but maybe that was their way of looking at it, or they mis-spoke (or could be assumed to mis-speak), and so on. The error may be there but it may be appropriate – or at least explainable (or ignorable until the next edition or a patch release of a game, if that).

The “error” may be a bit fuzzy.  So maybe you can just ignore it or make a note of it if somehow it comes up again.

Can You Explain It?

OK, you determined there’s a problem.  It’s not a mistake on your part, it’s not due to or explainable by perspective. You botched something in your setting.

It may not be that bad. Maybe it’s a character issue, like above, only a bit more pronounced than a  simple “probably perspective” answer.. Maybe you can decide someone read something wrong in a textbook. Maybe the robe was green due to some peculiar superstition as opposed to the purple it was supposed to be.

Now if you can explain something, you may not have to go “fix things.” Keep a note in your worldbuilding journals and documents or something. If it’s not a big thing, then you may not need to worry.  You’re covered just in case.

Can You Fix Something By Changing Things?

If you can’t explain (or hand-wave) away your problem, you may have to go fixing things in your setting. So maybe it’s time to tweak your world – if the error is big enough to require making some changes.

This is a pretty easy way to do things; slightly alter continuity to make up for errors. You’re probably doing this a little bit every now and then anyway as you tweak and poke ideas into shape or solidify them. This is also an effective but unradical solution.

Maybe a spell is less powerful than you wanted, so you decide “hey, that is the case” and you need to alter how someone survived an encounter (“after using magic then, I just managed to escape with a good run”). Or perhaps yeah, there was an exchange rate error (“man, remember how many credits I paid on that planet?  Right before the rates went down?”).  You get the idea.  A little bit extra, a little tweak, can work wonders.

Just fixing things often leads to adding on new continuity, and it’s hard to distinguish the two. In fact . . .

Can You Fix It By Adding Something?

Look over the error. Maybe your continuity isn’t damaged, but needs something a bit extra to explain it. Take a look at what is supposedly wrong, and ask what addition to your continuity could make the wrong thing right.  It may even turn into an interesting extra story element.

Perhaps you explain some dialogue errors by deciding a character is bad at geography, and over time confronts their poor educational background.  Maybe your inconsistent writing about money can be explained by having fluctuating galactic exchange rates, which could be an interesting subplot if you’re writing an interplanetary war.

This isn’t much different than the above solution of making a change, except you’re deliberately grafting on a “patch” to your continuiy with something new.

Do not go throwing in something new into your world due to blind panic. It can create more problems down the road when your additions, included due to fear, create more continuity errors because they were created in a rush. Besides, you can get a kind of “mission creep” where you keep adding and adding ideas to fix problems, some caused by new additions, and it all spirals into a kind of perverse image of a creative rush.

Can You Fix It By Subtracting Something?

OK, maybe you can’t fix your error by adding something – perhaps there is a part of continuity that, when removed, fixes the problem and maintains continuity. After all, some parts are more necessary than others to your world.

Personally, I don’t like doing this, its a chance to create more problems, even moreso than adding elements to your continuity. A story universe can unravel quickly if you start yanking out threads of ideas, slowly becoming an unstable skeleton of it’s formal self.

I include it as an option, because it can work.  The heroes weren’t ambushed by orcs that one time because, well, their tribal lands just don’t reach as far as thought. Or maybe there is no cure for that disease in the story (which means you get to throw an invent-a-cure subplot), or the cure was a fraud.

It can work.  Use it with caution.

Retcontinuity

This is the Big Enchilada of correcting continuity mistakes. Its not for amateurs, and in some cases, not for professionals. This is correcting a mistake or mistakes (and big ones) by making them part of the story and the continuity. In short, the problems become part of the world.

We’re all too familiar with this happening in comics, where every few years someone decides to press the “Reboot universe button.” DC’s infamous “continuity collapse” in Zero Hour is perhaps one of the greatest examples, but your changes don’t have to be that radically. Actually they probably shouldn’t be.

But you could run with this and in the right hands it gets interesting. That little flaw can become a cornerstone to something greater.  Decide that the time you got some important history wrong in your own world indicates a conspiracy that has altered historical records.  A bunch of spells didn’t work right due to a hideous building magical fluctuation.

As you can see, this could quickly get out of hand.  But, it is an option.

This is not an option I recommend unless you’re very, very sure you can do it right. I’ve seen ambitious undertakings like this, and its definitely not easy. However, it is an option, and it has the added advantage of turning a mistake into a whole new story idea and hopefully a firmer continuity.

I’m not exactly a fan of this method, but with great challenges come great possibilities.

One warning however is that if anyone asks, be the heck honest about it. Don’t act like you have a plan, just note you found a flaw, and in the effort of figuring it out a greater story emerged.

Besides, people will know.

Conclusion

A flaw in your continuity isn’t the end of the world so to speak, and in some cases isn’t worth worrying about. But when the time comes that you must address one, use the appropriate solution for the problem.

– Steven Savage

Tie-ins are a difficult area to judge.  At what point does a work stop being merchandising and start being a work of its own?  I have reviewed some tie-in works, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic because of its impact on the Internet and the Richard Castle Nikki Heat novels because of the meta nature of the books.  While I have reviewed movies based on toys – G.I. Joe – The Rise of Cobra and Battleship – I haven’t touched any of the animated works.  The cartoons came about after the easing of US Federal Communications Commission regulations restricting toy- and game-based series in the 80s.  While several cartoons from the era were memorable, including Transformers and Jem and the Holograms, most were just there for merchandising.

Last month, The LEGO Movie opened.  A CGI animated action movie, The LEGO Movie was based on LEGO, the construction bricks created in 1949 and refined in 1958.  Given that the company wasn’t directly behind the creation of the movie, I felt that The LEGO Movie was an adaptation.

Since the film is still in theatres, I’ll try to keep the summary as spoiler-free as possible.  The plot has Emmett, a Minifig, find the Piece of Resistance that makes him the Special that can stop Lord Business from using his secret weapon to destroy all of the different worlds.  Unfortunately, Emmett isn’t all that special, but WyldStyle, who was looking for the Piece of Resistance, is there to help him in the fight against Lord Business.  Along the way, Emmett and Wyldstyle get help from Batman to get to Cloud Cuckooland to find the Master Builders in hiding.

The movie uses many a bad pun.

The characters are well aware that they are in a LEGO multiverse and most can build items out of the scenery.  The CGI makes it hard to tell whether the settings were built physically out of LEGO bricks or if the animators were just that good.  The ground, where it isn’t paved by flat-topped bricks, has the classic LEGO brick struts, including the company’s logo.  With adaptations, the little details can make or break the work.  The eye for detail in The LEGO Movie is amazing.  Emmett’s hair has a molding seam.  The 80s Spaceman’s helmet has a crack where the piece always got a crack.  The Minifigs, for the most part, come from existing sets past and present.  The construction scene as the big musical number starts has a Minifig calling for a 1×2 macaroni piece and getting it, just as people playing with LEGO bricks have since, well, 1958.

The LEGO Movie felt like the writers were playing with LEGO while working on the script.  Building of items, like a motorcycle from parts in an alley, referenced the LEGO videogames, where players could do just that.  The buildings, the vehicles, the animals, the sets, all could be built given enough bricks.  Given that LEGO is a toy meant for creating your own designs, the movie showed possibilities and encouraged imagination.

As an adaptation, The LEGO Movie worked.  Emmett lived in a LEGO world and acted knowing he was a LEGO minifig.  All the bits came together and screamed “LEGO!” as the movie progressed while still allowing the story to unfold.  The story itself could not be told without the LEGO bricks.

Next week, the nature of tie-in media and adaptations.