Post by rorschalk on May 24, 2021 17:22:46 GMT
This venture is a big, beautiful steaming mess. A veritable grab bag of tone and style seeming to be heading toward some grand philosophical climax, that ends with a misplaced happily-ever-after whimper. To borrow from one of the caps finest ever (one of my all time favorites from now until forever) analogies, it's one bendy mirror short of a funhouse. Well, several bendy mirrors short to be somewhat exact.
I'd like to take this opportunity to point out where, imo, the cap goes wrong, and throw out some ideas on how the VC might go about fixing it.
The setting is definitely Bar Fly Bukowski. The characters typical down and outers trying to get along. Then what Cassie does to her dog when they’re out on a crosstown bender just cements their unsympathetic nature. At this point I’m giving zero fucks about them. Their status as lovable losers, a la Jeff Bridge’s ‘The Dude’ is totally out the window. This aspect has got to be fixed somehow, rectified. The fact Cassie quit drinking due to the dog’s slow, excruciating death she was responsible for only to become addicted to cocaine shows only her total lack of self awareness and may be a blindspot the VC isn’t realizing he is showing. It’s actually terrifying to realize that she already has another dog to care for.
Evan is more likeable, though nothing about him stands out besides his acceptance of his lack of merit. Someone so OK with his own sub mediocrity is hard to build a successful narrative around. Also, splitting up the piece into sections where the narration ping pongs from Cassie to Evan threw me at first. There was something about him wondering if something tasted like God’s pussy and I was still in Cassie’s head due to the fact that the section before that was narrated by her and I hadn’t clicked to the fact this section was narrated by Evan so I was think Cassie must be a lesbian. Only on doubling back and realizing the sections were different narrators did I then understand. Part of the problem with this technique is the narrator’s voice seemed not to be much different, so there’s no cue for the reader to know right away, hey, this is a different person. Either write them differently or quit trying for the dual narrator attack.
So. You’ve got two unlikable characters to begin with no discernible pathways to redemption. One fix for this fix you’re in would be to let the clown’s win. Bring back the dog the Cassie, albeit inadvertently, made suffer and die as a zombie dog who gets to feast on her. He could be Calamity’s new pet or something. Who knows? Anyhow. That’s just one avenue. Speaking of which, out of absolutely nowhere Cassie and Evan become clown killing super ninja’s straight out of mortal combat? The cap begins with a fairly straightforward, gritty realistic tone, and then switches at this point of the clown massacre to total fabulist cartoonish ultra violence reminiscent of Kill Bill, with Cassie as the Bride and Evan as her sidekick Mr. Indestructo Banzai man. So. There’s no tension. The stakes are not high because Cassie and Evan are the superheroes of killing clowns at this point. The poor clowns don’t stand a chance.
For me, after this scene, the entire cap was just playing out the string toward the predictable happily-ever-after epilogue. The Ostrich wranglers was a great image, but the way they commandeered the flightless bird from the muscle clown was pure Roger Rabbit ridiculousness. Like I said, the beginning tone of the cap got my mind in a frame that was totally obliterated by the switch to cartoon physics and cause and effect. The symbolic possibilities for the ‘zombie clowns’ to be representative of a compliant, dumbed down society was smashed to bits by the tonal shift, and relegated them to their two dimensional antecedents on the Looney Tune screen. Which is a shame because there is definitely some potential here for a great capital gain.
The cocktail sword prep was also a sore thumb sticking out. Who puts a cocktail sword that they impaled their finger on because it was hiding in their pocket back in the same pocket where it had injured them?!!!!! Made no sense but that it was something that needed preparation for farther on down the line in the cap, and sure as shooting it was. A plastic cocktail sword was the thing that saved the day, along with a well-timed cloud of cocaine dust. Too convenient and the clown master Calamity was dealt with to easily. No tension. No stakes really. Cartoon simplicity to resolving the conflict. Like I said, maybe making them suffer like a dog broiled in an air locked, summer swelter would be a better way to go. Dunno. They didn’t really face any adversity. The ending was never in doubt. The epilogue is pure cheese and unnecessary to say the least.
On the flip side, I did love the set up and the follow through of Evan’s transformation to a mime! That was pure gold. Even the extended ellipsis of his Mime chapter.
So. This here has great potential, but right now it’s a unamalgamated mess at cross purposes to itself. You just need to click it all together somehow now and smooth it over in order to make it sing with one voice. I wish you the best of luck.
I'd like to take this opportunity to point out where, imo, the cap goes wrong, and throw out some ideas on how the VC might go about fixing it.
The setting is definitely Bar Fly Bukowski. The characters typical down and outers trying to get along. Then what Cassie does to her dog when they’re out on a crosstown bender just cements their unsympathetic nature. At this point I’m giving zero fucks about them. Their status as lovable losers, a la Jeff Bridge’s ‘The Dude’ is totally out the window. This aspect has got to be fixed somehow, rectified. The fact Cassie quit drinking due to the dog’s slow, excruciating death she was responsible for only to become addicted to cocaine shows only her total lack of self awareness and may be a blindspot the VC isn’t realizing he is showing. It’s actually terrifying to realize that she already has another dog to care for.
Evan is more likeable, though nothing about him stands out besides his acceptance of his lack of merit. Someone so OK with his own sub mediocrity is hard to build a successful narrative around. Also, splitting up the piece into sections where the narration ping pongs from Cassie to Evan threw me at first. There was something about him wondering if something tasted like God’s pussy and I was still in Cassie’s head due to the fact that the section before that was narrated by her and I hadn’t clicked to the fact this section was narrated by Evan so I was think Cassie must be a lesbian. Only on doubling back and realizing the sections were different narrators did I then understand. Part of the problem with this technique is the narrator’s voice seemed not to be much different, so there’s no cue for the reader to know right away, hey, this is a different person. Either write them differently or quit trying for the dual narrator attack.
So. You’ve got two unlikable characters to begin with no discernible pathways to redemption. One fix for this fix you’re in would be to let the clown’s win. Bring back the dog the Cassie, albeit inadvertently, made suffer and die as a zombie dog who gets to feast on her. He could be Calamity’s new pet or something. Who knows? Anyhow. That’s just one avenue. Speaking of which, out of absolutely nowhere Cassie and Evan become clown killing super ninja’s straight out of mortal combat? The cap begins with a fairly straightforward, gritty realistic tone, and then switches at this point of the clown massacre to total fabulist cartoonish ultra violence reminiscent of Kill Bill, with Cassie as the Bride and Evan as her sidekick Mr. Indestructo Banzai man. So. There’s no tension. The stakes are not high because Cassie and Evan are the superheroes of killing clowns at this point. The poor clowns don’t stand a chance.
For me, after this scene, the entire cap was just playing out the string toward the predictable happily-ever-after epilogue. The Ostrich wranglers was a great image, but the way they commandeered the flightless bird from the muscle clown was pure Roger Rabbit ridiculousness. Like I said, the beginning tone of the cap got my mind in a frame that was totally obliterated by the switch to cartoon physics and cause and effect. The symbolic possibilities for the ‘zombie clowns’ to be representative of a compliant, dumbed down society was smashed to bits by the tonal shift, and relegated them to their two dimensional antecedents on the Looney Tune screen. Which is a shame because there is definitely some potential here for a great capital gain.
The cocktail sword prep was also a sore thumb sticking out. Who puts a cocktail sword that they impaled their finger on because it was hiding in their pocket back in the same pocket where it had injured them?!!!!! Made no sense but that it was something that needed preparation for farther on down the line in the cap, and sure as shooting it was. A plastic cocktail sword was the thing that saved the day, along with a well-timed cloud of cocaine dust. Too convenient and the clown master Calamity was dealt with to easily. No tension. No stakes really. Cartoon simplicity to resolving the conflict. Like I said, maybe making them suffer like a dog broiled in an air locked, summer swelter would be a better way to go. Dunno. They didn’t really face any adversity. The ending was never in doubt. The epilogue is pure cheese and unnecessary to say the least.
On the flip side, I did love the set up and the follow through of Evan’s transformation to a mime! That was pure gold. Even the extended ellipsis of his Mime chapter.
So. This here has great potential, but right now it’s a unamalgamated mess at cross purposes to itself. You just need to click it all together somehow now and smooth it over in order to make it sing with one voice. I wish you the best of luck.