Commentary - Phase Three Part One

My second arc or 'Volume' as it were for my self-written stories has begun. I've named it Phase Three in honor of the Heroes Survival Game. In phase three of the game, factions now declare enemies and drain each other's Resources by members answering Faction Urgent Request messages. In the spirit of that, I crafted part one around this element. A faction stole Resources from Undaunted, and now its time to take back what's theirs.

I also had this desire to start writing big op stories where teams of various members of Undaunted team up and go on missions together which is what the B-plot of my first arc was setting up and comes to a head in part five. For research, I sat down and went through every member's bios for about five days total, wrote down important things (i.e. name, power, location, personality) I found off their bio and then organized them into a Word document by the four advanced ability categories given by the Primatech Assignment Tracker 2.0 files.

And so I narrowed it down even further by trying to match specific powers and personalities into a team for this part one. I needed a teleporter, some long range, some mid-range, some melee fighters...some recon that sort of thing. Once I had that list squared away, then I began to outline how I would use them in the story and drew place markers, they'd be here at this point, then here at that point, they use their power this way and so on.

Once the outline for that story was penciled, I then began to focus on Trevor's part in all this. Story-wise, part one jumps weeks ahead from part five's late summer 2007 to September 10, hopefully right around where Volume 5 of Heroes starts off. All I had going on that were the time cues from previous Volumes and the fact that Claire is starting college at Arlington U. Anyway, I toyed with the idea of putting it out there that all these factions attacking Undaunted is beginning to put a strain on Trevor and making him more paranoid.

At first, he was going to just download building blueprints and join the team but it seemed like overkill with what the recon team was already doing so I started to edit that as a boon to Zhang and then Trevor's story grew into this confrontation with a small, lesser known faction that attacks Trevor. I think it subconsciously grew out of how in HSG, Undaunted was fighting a page nine faction that was, like its namesake, pretty dead and I created a couple characters from scratch.

I also am going to start a C-plot that begins each part. Story by story, I'm going to reveal what Trevor's childhood nightmare was (see part four) and fitting with his current lack of sleep, these nightmares organically surface at odd times. The nightmare will feature one of my favorite 'never gonna appear on the show, allegedly' characters. I also decided that the first line of the story will be a specific favorite quote.

In part one, the lines start with quotes from Marv, of Sin City, then melts into the nightmare and connects with Trevor's past struggle with finding a purpose in his life. The nightmare, itself, is up to interpretation. To me, I think the void represents Mu, nothingness, from Buddhism. From it comes Trevor, whose senses are covered up and he is in a state of ignorance, powerless and without a purpose in life. Trevor connects this nightmare to his lover's death as the jolt that made him reach his full potential.

Then here we are in present day, Trevor is in Chicago. I purposely picked the city to set up a reference in part two. His monologue speaks volumes of what is going on in the Heroes Survival Game, none of it was my idea originally. Then his thoughts slowly shift to paranoia and insecurity. And the implied lack of sleep isn't helping him either. Thus, I reference Marcus "Marc" Stark which comes into play in part two, as well.

The inclusion of this faction also gave me the opportunity to use a scene that's been on my to do list for awhile. A sun setting, light leaks in through dirty windows. It's definitely a metaphor for Trevor's search for truth.

Then ever since the Peter vs. the Vault Door in Volume Two "Powerless," I wanted to use that similar notion of an evolved being using his or her power on a big honkin' door so I knew I wanted to use a ferrokinetic like the German. The part where Riedel holds his finger to Trevor like a gun is an homage to the late Elle Bishop.

Trevor's line about being a janitor, gives away the title of the story, but more importantly establishes his mindset into what he thinks of himself and his position in the story. Sure, one could surmise he's anything from an inner circle elitist, a leader, a general, the intel guy, or the crazed loner but to him, he likens himself to an unlikely and ironic occupation. And in the bit where he names everyone and their powers, that's a loose reference to a minor gripe I have about the minor specials that appear in the Heroes Evolutions with part of or no name at all.

"That's not the magic word" is another reference from my favorite movie, Ghostbusters, when Walter Peck first meets Dr. Venkman.

This scene with the telepath is my attempt to explore the facets of Enhanced Memory a step more. For the most part, it's a non-offensive, even wimpy power to have. But use it the right way and maybe, one could even kill a telepath. I imagined that since the power makes someone store data like a computer does in 1's and 0's, it can equally upload data, too. Hence, when you have a amateur telepath trying to open your mind, you just release it like a breached damn and upload way too much data at once into the telepath's brain.

And the next chunk is plain classic Trevor along with a reference to Beatrix Melody, a member of Undaunted in HSG. I imagine in this story, she'd be a major behind the scenes player that helps set up missions and strategy. But for Trevor, he's still skeptical, nothing is 100% to him.

Visually, this next part comes from Sin City again, when Miho saves Dwight from the tar pit but with Trevor and James. And I couldn't resist another smartass line from Trevor to James. And so the story shifts into the big op. Melody figures out who stole the resources, and Trevor sets up an op with three teams. While Athena Leuce keeps everyone hidden, Frank Tanner and Alexander Minner do their recon. Clara Zhang fills multiple roles, she's tips off the other teams and ultimately transportation. I knew Kurt Hasian is a comic book geek so I had to work his personality out into the story. And to avoid a gaff from the first part, Trevor used up all his bullets and we didn't see him replace them yet so I opted to do it here in a badass way.

Then everything was written according to my outline and it was smooth sailing and let the characters shine. Then we have the return of Carson Ford who briefly appeared in my first story. I always wanted to see Aerokinesis tackled on the show and decided to do it here. Rather than create some giant hurricane, it's used in a subtle manner, neutralize the person by extracting all their oxygen.

And I knew I was going to use Kurt's power and make it cool and still funny at the same time, hence turning the invisible man turquoise. I don't know, that strikes me as funny and ridiculous. And then cap off with some dark humor as Trevor all of sudden just shoots behind him without any care.

Then I decided to end this story with a shout out to a discussion I took part recently in the 9th Wonders! Forum.