Commentary - Undaunted Part One

MATHEMATICS, FINANCE, AND HOW TREVOR FITS IN

As I said before, numbers are a motif with Trevor's power. I liken his power as storing any form of information, numbers, words, images, what have you as strings of 1's and 0's like a computer. They explored this notion with Matt Neuenberg in the graphic novels. So I wanted to explore his power a little more and make it cooler, if only to me at least.

So Part One starts with a reference to the Black Swan Events, a financial theory by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and visually, I used the explosion at the end of season one. Ultimately, I thought this was the unexpected moment, the catalyst that caused everything to happen as it did in the Heroesverse. It also implied from his job history, maybe Trevor was a Finance Major and if he never manifested, he'd probably ended being a Certified Financial Analyst. That never came to be, and his analyst skill is being used very differently.

GUEST STARS

Since I planned to slowly put more emphasis on Undaunted as the stories got made, it made sense for me to have Trevor interact with other members. I could never decide on the two in the beginning until a month later when I was reading every Undaunted members' bios and figuring out which to use in an upcoming story. I liked Kurt Hasian and Carson Ford alot, because one's a geek and one's a wise ass. They're there to complement Trevor, who is sort of in the middle in terms of personality if you want to approach it that way. To me, he's somewhere between Batman, the Question, and Rorschach. He's got snark, the detective quality, strategizing, obsessive, the loner and what not. So I decided to edit part one and add in Hasian and Ford.

And may notice, I do visualize as I wrote this and I clearly know what I want the scene to look like. It helps me write to picture it as a graphic novel or webisode. I definitely wanted some piece of shit, shady room with electronics to be a base of operations. It's one of the first times you get a description of Trevor's safe houses.

JUMPING IN

And between the HSG bio and this story, months have passed. I skipped ahead to lay down the plot of Undaunted and reveal Trevor's assorted past in pieces out of order, the way most serials do now. I chose certain parts of the past based on the story so that by the end of part five, you can construct Trevor's past and it won't even matter that I will never reveal his real name. I latched to that theory on how you never reveal your name, because there is power in it and once your enemy knows, you're defeated. Story-wise, it's just what is laid out, it's part of another life that he can never have back so he ditched the name and chose a new one.

And I don't know, I must have been on the same wavelength as Tom Inkel but I wanted to link part one and part two specifically to events going on in iStory Book Six and give an idea of, yes I did my homework, and I'm not screwing with continuity in anyway whatsoever. More on Mr. Inkel later.

SET UPS

And yes, I mentioned multiple things to set up future plots such as with Seal. Sort of dangle that idea of what is Trevor's relationship with Seal and Teleporter and it came together quite nicely. And of course, the image of Thompson Jr. was a set up for part two which later became a big deal to me (see above) and tying back into Trevor's original revenge goal with the current mission at hand. At this point, I danced with idea of Trevor's loyalty to Undaunted. If he had a chance to get back at the agents, would be betray/leave Undaunted. And I want that idea to dance around until part five.

FLASHBACKS

Yeah, at times it was a bit too Lost-y but it fit what I set out to do. So visually, you in this dank, dark, dilapidated building filled with computers, then all of a sudden, BAM, you're looking at a bright forest of bamboo, it's day, the colors are vibrant...total contrast of scene. What links these two scenes...Trevor. And as much as time drives me crazy on Heroes, I was very specific on dates and locations.

This first flashback refers back to Leona's texts and explores further what is going on with Trevor. And it seems like Trevor took a vow of silence as the monk and probably the whole temple are getting curious about who this outsider is. And so the conversation ties into the fact that Trevor used his power to be fluent in several languages, here, in Mandarin. And with the monk, I mashed in theories of two great minds Chikamatsu and Drucker, one a Japanese playwright and the other, a business savant, along with a throwback to Volume One. But not an obvious one then followed by an obvious one!

Here, I wanted to experiment with a montage scene and I heart it. The images mostly all jump all out of order and illustrate past scenes I wrote about like the death of Trevor's girlfriend (which was a powerful moment) and grounding him further into the Heroesverse, he was near Kaitos funeral?! OMG. That's the sort of reaction I was gauging. And each line also ties into the image, it's not random selections.

And Leona Mills, I just loved how iStory introduced her from a coffin. I knew I had to use that image and here, it's a set up for part two. And with Mags and Seal, I don't know how I came up with that one, it just popped in there. You see, the beautiful thing about these stories is, I'd look at the timeline of Trevor, outline what I want to do in the story, go do whatever I had to do in the day, then exactly around 12:30 AM, my creative juices amped up and I write each part in one sitting. So really, it only took five nights total to write. So for Mags and Seal, I just wanted a funny way of how Seal's power works, he bumps into Mags and realizes her story and they have an awkward moment, does Seal know or not, then contrast that with urgency of Building 26. So this happened in Volume 4 separate from Trevor's story. If their character's creators agree with this or not is unknown.

And the bank scene, I really wanted a foreshadowy moment and nothing better than when Trevor was working at a bank and unbeknowst to him at the time, two Company agents are gathering intel on him, posing as bank patrons, sort of a loose reference to Claire's fake bio-parents. But I wanted to put that feeling of dread like Bahn is inches away from Trevor and he doesn't even realize it.

Then the montage fades and we return to discover this takes place exactly when Mills started texting Trevor.