Tag Archives: Buffy

The Alpha Breakdown – Story

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Now it’s time for the last part of my three part series breaking down The Alpha. This one will focus on the influences and inspirations for the story itself.

**There are spoilers involved so, if you haven’t read The Alpha (or The Pack for that matter), you may want to skip this until after you have.**

As mentioned in the characters post, the main theme of The Alpha is finding where you belong in the world. Of course, that also involves resolving past traumas and moving on to where you’re meant to be.

That the characters are working through their tragic pasts also allowed me to go a bit lighter with the tone. Which makes sense since who didn’t have a better time in college than in high school? You get a fresh lease on life, and you really are more well equipped to handle the emotional landmines that life lays in front of you.

I’ve also always been intrigued by the idea of secret societies directing the course of the world for their own nefarious ends. I was glad to have Hadrian Graysmith’s long tendrils give me a chance to explore that in this novel.

I wanted to change the mechanics of the story to differentiate it from the dread of the unknown that permeated The Pack. That is why I presented a trio of fully-formed venatores in the prime of their lives. In a way it was me reliving the excitement I felt when Star Wars: Episode One promised to show us that sort of fully-trained Jedi.

Luke never really became a true Jedi, Yoda and Obi Wan were past their primes, Darth Vader was an abomination, and The Pack only really showed Jack Halliday doing his best after being on a 10 year bender. Meanwhile, Craig, Izzy and Michael are all in mid-season form. I do rather hope that The Alpha was executed better than Episode One, but that’s still what planted the seed.

I also wanted to get into more action in this book than in The Pack, which built up the tension for the first two-thirds of the story before unleashing the horrific fury of violence of the last third. Allow me to indulge myself and discuss my favorite action set pieces from The Alpha.

The subway train/tunnel massacre was inspired by my many subway rides that were spent imagining what would happen if the train were suddenly attacked by monsters. What can I say, being stuck in a subterranean metal tube causes my mind to wander. It was also inspired a bit by the cult classic C.H.U.D, the creatures from which I also spent time looking for in the darkened tunnels that shot off in all directions.

That led directly to Michael winning a hard fought battle against a horde of vampires, and then moving directly onto the big boss. The rooftop pummeling  was my chance to lay some groundwork similar to Batman: Knightfall, wherein our hero is not really prepared to deal with his nemesis and so is nearly beaten to death by him. That, of course, sets up the big rematch at the end.

Michael and Natalie as reluctant partners has its roots in most buddy cop movies or team-ups similar to Buffy & Spike or Daredevil & The Punisher. The pair fighting their way up the Graysmith Enterprises building was inspired by a number of sources as well. Not the least of which would be Ong Bak 2, The Raid and Dredd.

Alpha Michael vs Vamp Lord Graysmith was probably based more on the countless hours of pro wrestling I’ve watched over the years than anything else. Natalie cleaning up after Michael, and being the one who actually finishes off Graysmith, was just a fun twist on the typical End Boss Battle.

That concludes my three part blog breaking down The Alpha. I hope you found it insightful and, if you haven’t yet read The Venator Series, maybe it will inspire you to do so. There will be another Venator Series entry in the near future, but be on the lookout for a couple of other works coming from me in the even nearer future.

Thanks for stopping by, and keep readin’!

On Time Travel & Terminators

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Terminator Genisys opens on July 1st and, while I am cautiously optimistic that it will be good, I am certainly going to use the opportunity to discuss the use of time travel in entertainment.

I’m no quantum physicist – sorry to disappoint – so I’ll be giving a bit of a layman’s take on the three most frequently used types of time travel. Of course there have been many other types used here and there, but I’ll be focusing on the ones that seem to be the most recurrent. The Terminator film franchise had really made use of all three types, which is why I’ll be using that as a jumping off point.

I will be referring to the theories here as the the Infinite Loop, the Running River and the Parallel Timelines theory.  Not exactly scientific terminology but I find them to be fitting, so let’s just roll with it.

The Terminator goes with the Infinite Loop theory, which essentially states that time is a circle. Everything that will ever happen has already happened and will happen again and again and again. Specifically in this case, John Connor sends Kyle Reese back in time to protect his mother Sarah Connor from a Terminator sent back to kill her by Skynet, and then Reese ends up becoming John’s father.

The suggestion here is that Reese was always John’s father, and so the future and the past have always been set in stone. By the end of the movie, Judgment Day – the nominal nuclear destruction of the human race – has not been averted. So, humanity is blasted, John Connor leads the rebellion against the machines, Skynet sends a Terminator back in time, John sends Reese back in time to protect his mother, and the events of the film continue on an infinite cycle.

The Infinite Loop is typically used in tragic stories, as it plays with the notion of unavoidable fate always trumping free will. This is why it’s the theory favored by the fairly nihilistic Rust “time is a flat circle” Cohle in True Detective, and Battlestar “all of this has happened before and all of this will happen again” Galactica.

T2 switches gears and uses “no fate but what we make” as it driving mantra. I’m going to skip the details of the film since, if you haven’t seen it, then I’m sure you’ve already stopped ready this blog post. The bottom line is that Sarah Connor, the super annoying preteen version of her son John, and a Terminator fresh off a babyface turn (wrasslin’ reference alert) decide to go ahead and stop Judgment Day from ever happening.

It’s not made clear whether they succeeded in the theatrical release, but several of the home video versions have a deleted epilogue where an elderly Sarah Connor is playing with her grandkids in a park. All of which suggests that Judgment Day was, in fact, averted.

This is the Running River theory, called such since a good analogy for it is that, if a river’s course is diverted at any point, then every point that flows after that affected point is changed as well. However, it is still the same river. This theory is used in stories with happier endings, as it illustrates that we can change our future for the better. The best example of this is perhaps Back To The Future, wherein Marty McFly changes his family’s life for the better after a brief, reverse-Oedipal wracked, visit to his parents’ past.

Terminator 3 flipped back to the Infinite Loop theory and, while I wouldn’t mind blogging about how that movie get a bad rap and is actually pretty good, it would be superfluous to go further into it.

Terminator Salvation, also better than its reputation though still not especially good, doesn’t really have much to do with time travel. As such, I’m going to twist the facts here to get to my last point. It could be interpreted as saying that the future (or the present, I suppose) may not be the same as it once was. In fact, it may be an entirely different timeline.

Parallel Timelines have long been the theory of choice for ongoing stories. DC  and Marvel Comics have had several “Event Series” and one or two movies that stemmed from this version of time travel. Buffy The Vampire Slayer had a great episode titled Dopplegangland, where a vampire version of Willow crosses over the the “Prime” timeline.  That’s a good specific example of why comic books favor his method – because it allows for different versions of characters to interact with one another. It also enables them with to do things with – and to – famous characters that they otherwise couldn’t (for primarily economic reasons).

The broader explanation for Parallel Timelines is that anytime someone goes back in time and changes something, a whole new future is created from that point forward. The original timeline still exists, adhering to the Infinite Loop rules, but the new timeline essentially falls under Running River rules. But, again, that timeline has not been changed. A new one has simply been created.

Looper, an awesome time travel movie that you should see if you haven’t yet, sits on the fence between Parallel Timelines and Running River, but I always interpreted it more as the former than the latter. The underseen Source Code is a better pure example of Parallel Timelines, where soldier/lab rat Colter Stevens is continually sent back in time to try and stop a terrorist attack on a  train. This theory can be bittersweet, as it allows for a happy ending in one timeline, but you know that things still turn out crappy in the others.

The Parallel Timelines theory of time travel actually plays off of a similar philosophical theory. The philosophy states that, to keep it as brief as possible, every decision that every living being makes creates its own distinct timeline. I’m rather fond of this theory, but it would take another couple thousand words to get into.

To bring things full circle, or back to the start of this particular Infinite Loop, Terminator Genisys opens on July 1st and I’m going to check it out. Looks like they’re throwing together a grab bag of every time travel theory mentioned above, and so it may be an unholy mess. But I’m never one to pass on a time travel movie, so I’ll be there.

Thanks for indulging my crackpot take, I’ll be back soon with some news about my own works, so keep readin’!