Good Guys and Bad Guys

Good Guys and Bad Guys

An Essay by

Paul Adams

            This is an essay I wrote for my final year of college.

            Throughout history, the tendency for humanity to cast themselves as the “good guys” and those who oppose them as the “bad guys” is possibly as old as humanity itself. Of course, the logical explanation to this is that it’s easier to confront a problem when cast in a two-dimensional black-and-white viewpoint than to try to understand all the thousands of layers of complexity that make up reality. For better or for worse, this tendency has been a staple of human interaction for millenia, most notable in recent centuries through American politics, entertainment, and culture. “Hollywood,” for instance, “has long since mastered the art of interpreting history in ways that express the popular mood of the moment. Especially when it comes to war, the packaging typically involves putting the United States at center stage, while marginalizing or distorting the role of others and ignoring details that don’t fit into an America-centric narrative.”[1]

            Author Andrew J. Bacevich tackles this issue frequently in his book America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History. “Time and again,” he says, “when confronting situations of daunting political complexity, the United States has personalized the issue.”[2] The United States, like so many before, continually falls into the same trap of simplifying complex situations into “Good vs. Evil” scenarios to justify getting involved. In this essay, I will examine the various methods and ways the United States purports these images throughout their various wars involving various Middle Eastern countries.

            During the events of World War II, the man known as Adolf Hitler led Germany through a hate-filled and bloody reign of terror, declaring war on many of the largest world powers of the day and committing one of the most heinous acts of genocide in recent memory. In the decades since the war, Hitler’s actions have made him the ultimate example of evil throughout the world, a secular stand-in for Satan, if you will. As such, many opponents to America will inevitably be cast as “the next Hitler,” alongside basically every President since he lived, according to their political opponents. Trump is Hitler, Obama was Hitler, Bush was Hitler, and so on.

            According to Bacevich, “On the long list of Hitlers with whom the United States has contended since the demise of the genuine article back in 1945, Saddam Hussein certainly ranks at or near the very top.”[3] If any opposing leader in the last fifty years has come closest to fitting the bill for Hitler 2.0, Iraq’s leader Saddam Hussein certainly got very close. He ran a cruel dictatorship, he fought against America on multiple accounts, he even sported an easily recognizable mustache. These parallels were drawn most heavily during the era of Desert Storm in the late 80’s and early 90’s. President George H.W. Bush often “urged the Iraqi people to rid themselves of Saddam, whom he described as ‘Hitler revisited.’”[4]

In short, when an opposing nation has a less-than-beneficent leader at its head, casting them as the next Hitler makes it easy for the United States to justify going to war with said leader’s country. Who’s going to argue against the U.S. taking out a Bond villain sitting up in his lair of doom, laughing evilly and wearing a red cape, watching his people suffer down below? Soon, the idea spread quickly that “‘quarrels in [a] region were not really about age-old religious differences but rather the result of many unscrupulous and manipulative leaders seeking their own power and wealth at the expense of ordinary people.’ By implication, removing or at least intimidating unscrupulous leaders offered the most direct path to giving ordinary people the justice they deserved.”[5]

Many started to hold the viewpoint that it should be the military’s main goal to strike at that specific leader, that “second Hitler,” and take them down. Then all the problems in the country would be resolved. However, according to Bacevich, “When put to the test, this logic proved defective on two counts. First, few leaders are actually irreplaceable. Get rid of one, and another appears: ‘The cemeteries are filled with indispensable men,’ briefly mourned and soon forgotten. Second, the peremptory removal of those few possessing some approximation of indispensability leaves a void, new problems taking the place of those magically solved by getting rid of the villain at the top.”[6] Ultimately, “Decapitation was to prove a poor substitute for strategy. Whatever problems the United States was facing in the Greater Middle East, they went much deeper than the actions of a few evildoers.”[7]

The label of “terrorist” is also a common justification for United States involvement. In 2001, the United States suffered a devastating blow at the hands of the Al Qaeda movement orchestrated by Osama bin Laden. During said attack, four U.S. planes were hijacked and forced to crash, two of which into the World Trade Center, with casualties ranking in the thousands. Naturally, this prompted the George W. Bush administration into immediate action against the man responsible, deploying troops immediately into Afghanistan.

“Terrorism” soon became a byword in line with “the next Hitler.” “In the presidential lexicon,” says Bacevich, “terrorism was interchangeable with evil, so a war to destroy terrorism, as Bush vowed to do, necessarily became a war to destroy evil.”[8] Even after much of the work in Afghanistan was over, Bush pressed forward, declaring war on all deemed to be terrorists. “More work remained to be done,” Bacevich tells us, “but not in Afghanistan. Bush vowed to turn next on what he called an ‘axis of evil’ consisting of Iraq, Iran, and North Korea.”[9] “‘We have seen their kind before,’ Bush said of America’s new enemy. ‘They are the heirs of all the murderous ideologies of the 20^th century. By sacrificing human life to serve their radical visions . . . they follow in the path of fascism, and Nazism, and totalitarianism.”[10]

Once again, Hitler found his way into the narrative, the byword which had become synonymous with all evil in the world. If one could draw reasonable parallels between Hitler and his Nazis and any group or person you intend to fight, you can be sure of garnering support from your people. Whether right or wrong, or whether the situation at hand is a bit more complicated than that, if you can appear as the great and noble good guy fighting against the next Hitler or the next Nazis, you have a good chance at support. As Ronald Reagan put it, “‘Let no terrorist question our will . . . or no tyrant doubt our resolve.’”[11]

Now, the tendency for humanity, and the United States itself, to this kind of thinking has its upsides and its downsides. If the opposing leader truly is a cruel and murderous tyrant in the vein of Hitler, this view will ensure the support necessary to overthrow said leader and free his people. If the opposing group truly are ruthless terrorists bent on spreading fear and suffering in their wake, it is in the best interest of everyone for the United States and other powerful nations to do something about it. Even Bacevich admits that “Without doubt, efforts by U.S. and allied forces saved many lives.”[12] The trouble comes when the situation is not so black-and-white and much more complexity is involved. That leader, while seeming a ruthless tyrant from an American viewpoint, may actually have benefitted his nation in many ways. Those murderous terrorists may look like heroic freedom fighters from a different perspective. The alternatives that remain after those groups have been taken out may end up being even worse. Talking about the situation in Bosnia in 1998 and their own “next Hitler” Slobodan Milošević, Bacevich describes how “In place of serious engagement with the complexities inherent in using force to move the Serbs out while keeping Kosovo in, Clark substituted amateur psychologizing of Slobodan Milošević. When he got that wrong, nothing remained but to improvise.”[13] Often, the story is not as clear-cut as Hitler and his Nazis.

Another point of complexity comes in the United States’ own agendas and perceptions. For instance, the U.S. Government’s version of the narrative toward Iraq changed multiple times during the last few decades. “When bolstering Iraqi military capabilities was the order of the day,” Bacevich explains, “U.S. government representatives soft-pedaled any criticism of Baghdad; when making the case that Iraq possessed altogether too much military power, they portrayed that country’s behavior as utterly unconscionable.”[14] At other times, “Preoccupation with settling past accounts occluded a clear understanding of the situation at hand.”[15]

This kind of mentality can cause problems on even the smaller interpersonal scale. For a nation with the kind of power that the United States has enjoyed for the last century or so. Of course, it’s natural that the United States would see its own necessity to get involved with other nations’ affairs, after all, “The possession of matchless military capabilities not only endowed the United States with the ability to right wrongs and succor the afflicted, it also imposed an obligation to do just that.”[16] If the United States sat back and did nothing when these situations arose, likely they would attract as much criticism as they do for getting involved.

So, with this responsibility and apparent obligation to get involved in situations of potential terrorists or Hitlers, the government needs support from its people and its allies if it hopes to succeed in the endeavor. And when presenting a situation to the masses, it can often be necessary to present it as simply as possible, the simplest, of course, being the “black-and-white” image. When the United States went to war briefly with Iraq in 1990, the government reminded the people of the failures that occurred in Vietnam years before. “At home,” Bacevich says, “the narrative of Desert Storm as Vietnam-done-right—‘a drama of dazzling display, brutal crispness, and amazingly decisive outcome’—gathered momentum and became all but irresistible.”[17] Likewise, they also used communism, another byword for “evil” in the years following the Cold War, to gain approval and support for their actions in Afghanistan. “Instead of seeing the failure of the Soviet project in Afghanistan for what it was,” Bacevich explains, “religious traditionalists emphatically rejecting secular modernity—Washington chose to interpret it as a sign of vindication. If collectivism had lost, democratic capitalism had won.”[18]

Ultimately, the issue of the “good guy vs. bad guy” mentality is a complicated one. It is often a natural human response when confronted with a complex issue with no clear solution. Casting one side as good and the other as evil tends to simplify said situation and present it nicely to the masses to gain support. So it’s too much to expect the mentality to go away, but that mentality can often prove to be dangerous when used by a major power like the United States or Russia. On the one hand, the mentality can influence action when necessary, as congressman Stephen Solarz put it, “‘The great lesson of our times is that evil still exists, and when evil is on the march it must be confronted.”[19] On the other hand, when the situation is not that simple, we may end up putting power into the hands of the real “bad guys” or making further problems for those who really weren’t the “bad guys.” Or we may simply make more problems to replace the old ones. And as much as we try to place the blame for all the problems on one person or group, we must remember that “Communism’s collapse notwithstanding, history had all along remorselessly ground onward . . . just as it now seems obvious that banishing slavery wasn’t of itself going to produce racial harmony and destroying fascism was not going to kindle world peace.”[20]

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[1] Andrew J. Bacevich, America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History (New York: Random House LLC), 1175, Kindle.

[2] Bacevich, America’s War, 2898.

[3] Ibid., 1732.

[4] Ibid., 2560.

[5] Ibid., 3505.

[6] Ibid., 2898.

[7] Ibid., 3522.

[8] Ibid., 4121.

[9] Ibid., 4352.

[10] Ibid., 4132.

[11] Ibid., 1497.

[12] Ibid., 2660.

[13] Ibid., 3738.

[14] Ibid., 1826.

[15] Ibid., 2330.

[16] Ibid., 2759.

[17] Ibid., 2506.

[18] Ibid., 1188

[19] Ibid., 2304.

[20] Ibid., 1200.

Star Keepers: A Legacy Among the Stars

Star Keepers

Chapter One: A Legacy Among the Stars

by Paul Adams

A panorama of millions of tiny stars glimmered through the large plexiglass window. Some were red giants, others white dwarves. A few were single suns, while still others were whole galaxies. Some millions of lightyears away, and some only a few. Quasars. Pulsars. In the upper right-hand corner of the window, a red one was no star at all, but a planet in the same solar system. A sea of wonders and adventure just ripe to be explored, but from behind the window, nothing more than a long black sheet sprinkled with tiny, uniform white specks.

Gavin closed his eyes. Composed. Professional, he told himself. He turned away from the window to finish putting on his uniform. Picking up his coat, he took special care not to wrinkle the silver fabric. A shiny red captain’s insignia glistened on the left lapel. He slipped one arm through the left sleeve, then the other through the right. As he buttoned the coat, he felt something crumple in the right breast pocket. He stopped and removed a small folded piece of paper, opening it and scanning the first few lines.

Dear Sir,

You are hereby promoted to the rank of Captain and are assigned command of the Starship Arrowhead, to protect and serve the peoples of the United Worlds, and to keep the peace as a member of the Star Keeper Corps, in accordance with . . .

Gavin carefully folded up the paper and placed it on his bookshelf next to his old Academy textbooks and his grandfather’s copies of Ender’s Game and Foundation. He finished buttoning his coat, and checked his reflection in the mirror. Clear blue eyes stared back at him from a youthful face that didn’t look like it quite fit the captain’s insignia below it. His dark brown hair was cropped short, as per military standard, and his chin was meticulously clean-shaven. His long nose gave him a bit of a noble look, but Gavin feared it wasn’t enough to counter the young look in his eyes. He took a deep breath and brushed at his uniform, smoothing out every slightest wrinkle he could find. The arms and legs were delicately creased, and not a piece of lint could be found, but still Gavin pored over it, doing everything he could to make sure he looked perfect.

Finally, only one piece of his ensemble remained. He picked up his nameplate off of the table, staring up at the row of pictures lining the nearby wall. Eleven people stared back at him, smiling for the camera and showing off their awards and accolades. At the far end, three individuals in astronaut suits posed against a backdrop of Earth’s moon, the man in the middle staring back at Gavin with clear blue eyes. The gold plate at his chest read Kent. Beside his picture, another man with dark brown hair shook hands with an alien, his chest proudly displaying Kent as well.

The portraits continued down the line. A stately woman with a long nose holding a treaty. A man in a star pilot’s uniform handing food to a starving alien child. Another woman with blue eyes laying the cornerstone for a new colony on Centauri IV. All named Kent. Gavin stood before the last two pictures, the first a portrait of an aged man with a long nose dressed up in the regalia of an admiral. Beside him was a picture of Orion Kent, the man with the shaggy, brown hair who had saved Aghri and his family twenty years before, being awarded the Galactic Medal of Honor. Both stared back at Gavin with stern, noble looks.

Gavin puffed out his chest and tried to keep his posture as straight as possible. “I will make you proud,” he promised them. He looked down to see that he was twirling his nameplate between his fingers the same way he used to do with his pens just before a big test at the academy. He stopped, holding the plate still. Grasping it with two fingers on each side, he held it up to the light. The nameplate was small, about an inch wide and three inches long, made of solid gold. Four letters gleamed in the light, delicately engraved in the plate’s surface.

KENT.

The steel door across from the window glowed blue and emitted a shrill beep. Gavin closed his eyes. “Composed,” he said. He pinned the nameplate to his coat, then turned and crossed to the door, waving his hand across it. The blue light dissipated and the gray steel turned translucent, revealing the hallway beyond. A yellow lizard hung in midair, his tail spinning above his body like a propeller, keeping him aloft. The lizard wore a broad smile across his face and was waving at the door like a fool. Long Tail, the ship’s communications officer.

Gavin suppressed a smile and waved his hand again, restoring the door’s solidity. He took a deep breath, checking his uniform one more time and straightening his posture. With a tap of his finger, the door slid open, revealing Long Tail once again.

“Good morning, Gavin,” the lizard said, his smile getting, if possible, even wider. “Ready for your big day?”

 “Long Tail,” he said, trying to maintain the air of a captain. “Is it time?”

The lizard pretended to check his wrist. “Somewhere around there. Coming?”

Gavin responded with a curt nod. “Let’s go,” he said. He stepped out into the hall. Tiny claws pressed into Gavin’s uniform as Long Tail perched on his shoulder, giving his tail a rest and letting it hang across Gavin’s other shoulder. “So, captain of your own ship, huh? How do I get one of those?”

“First off,” Gavin said, “by not riding your superior’s shoulders in public.” He shifted his shoulder, trying to shake the lizard off. Long Tail’s grip proved unshakeable.

Long Tail shook his head and sighed. “You think you know a guy. Ride his shoulder all through the academy and across two ships, then he becomes a big-time captain and suddenly that shoulder is hallowed ground.”

Gavin rolled his eyes. “Seriously, though. You need to get off before we get to the bridge.”

They turned a corner, and walked down a bright, stainless steel corridor ending in a clear cylindrical tube. Long Tail continued to ride Gavin’s shoulder all the way up to Gavin stopping before the tube and pressing his hand against the glass. “Captains aren’t supposed to walk around with their communication officers on their shoulders,” Gavin said. “You’re going to get me demoted to auxiliary officer.”

Long Tail adjusted himself on Gavin’s shoulder, looking perfectly comfortable. “Nah. You don’t have the skills for that job.”

A smaller glass cylinder slid into the tube before them, and the glass slid open. Gavin stepped inside and said “Bridge.” The glass slid shut and the lift shot upward.

“So,” Long Tail said. “Anyone fun joining us on board the ship this time?”

“How do you define fun?” Gavin asked.

Long Tail thought about it for a second. “Well, on the one hand,” Long Tail said, “I’d like someone I can hang with, you know. But on the other hand, I feel my shipboard experience would never be complete without some stuff-shirted stickler for rules that I can drive up the wall with various shenanigans.”

“You do realize that as captain, I cannot condone any ‘shenanigans.’”

“Well, yeah, but I know you too well. You’ll stick to the rules for a while, but you’ll crack eventually.”

Gavin rubbed his forehead. He tried to shake off Long Tail again, but the lizard still clung as if nothing happened. “Like I said. Demoted to auxiliary. That’s my fate.”

Long Tail picked a piece of lint off his own uniform and wiped it on Gavin’s. “Well, on the bright side, maybe they’ll make me captain to replace you.”

A square of light appeared at the top of the lift and it slowed to a stop. Gavin and Long Tail could see the bridge laid out before them. Before the glass slid open, Long Tail said “this is our stop,” and leaped off Gavin’s shoulder.

Gavin glanced at him, rolling his newly freed shoulder. “You’re not going to ride me onto the bridge, then?”

Long Tail smiled. “Nah,” he said. “We’ve got to have some level of decorum, right? Good luck in there, Captain.” Long Tail spun his tail and floated out onto the bridge. “Alright, look alive, everybody,” he said. “The captain is on the bridge. The captain is on the bridge.”

Gavin closed his eyes, and he collected his thoughts one more time. He straightened his posture and checked his uniform. With one last breath, he stepped out onto the bridge.

The bridge was a triangular room of cold gray metal, descending from the lift down five levels, like steps. On the bottom level, a man with dark, curly hair worked at five computer consoles, keeping the inner systems of the ship running. Between the third and fourth level down, a round white platform rose from the floor where the pilot sat at her console. Two more white platforms were built into alcoves on either side of the third level. Long Tail took his position in the alcove to the right, while the ship’s weapons officer stood in the opposite alcove. Two more officers, the combat and cultural officers respectively, sat facing the lift from the second level down, and Gavin’s first officer Aghri stood waiting beside the lift at the top.

“Captain,” the first officer said. The officer was tall, at least a head or two above Gavin, and he wore a similar silver uniform. His head sat atop a long thin neck like a balloon on a string, and his face jutted forward like a monkey’s. His pointed ears twitched and shifted, bristling against his forest of thick, quill-like hair, the right ear torn and ragged with scar tissue. Gavin forced himself not to stare at it. The first officer straightened out his long, clawed fingers and placed his hand vertically against his chest in salute, bowing slightly. “We await your command.”

Gavin nodded. “Thank you, Commander,” he said. He looked down at the officers now under his command. Six sets of eyes stared back. He couldn’t help but notice that many of them looked far more experienced than he. The combat officer studied him with her cold gray eyes, her gaze piercing right through him as if she could see his every inward doubt. The cultural officer’s watery gaze was more supportive and sympathetic, but still tinged with a shade of wariness. Aghri’s golden eyes remained flat, betraying no emotion at all. The computer officer had finally turned around, gazing up at Gavin through thick-rimmed glasses that displayed the images that had once been on his console screens. If Gavin squinted, he could just see the blue eyes of his cousin, James Garrison, forcing himself not to show any particular emotion. Gavin and James had talked briefly after they had both received their assignment, both agreeing that it was best that they remain professional during their service together. Gavin followed his lead and broke his gaze.

 Only the pilot gazed up at him with bright green eyes filled with hope and excitement. She looked about as young as Gavin himself, her face that of a fresh recruit just out of the academy, eager to receive her first orders from her first captain. Gavin sighed. Why couldn’t they all be like her, he wondered. That would make this all so much easier.

A large window took up most of the front wall and ceiling of the bridge, opening to the stars beyond the ship. A large purple planet hung in the upper right-hand corner of the window. A golden-green spaceship made up of three circular segments hovered in the center of their view. Gavin recognized the design. Woraugenn. The alien race his father had fought so many years ago. Gavin was tempted to smile at the thought of them being his first opponent.

“Report,” he told Aghri. “What’s the situation?”

“The ship appeared in the planet’s atmosphere thirty-three hours ago, Captain,” the first officer replied. “Our sensors detect a second ship in the area, a few lengths to our right.”

“Any signs of hostility,” Gavin said.

“None yet.”

Gavin stepped out to the edge of the first level. An octagonal platform rose out of the floor as he passed, providing him a seat. He sat and the metal reshaped itself to the contours of his body. He leaned forward, studying the enemy spacecraft. He’d been in potential combat situation, but never before as the highest voice of command. He remembered a situation with his last captain, who he had served under as first officer. A group of terrorists had been holding a freighter hostage. That captain had been able to bring the situation to a peaceful conclusion through his expert use of his combat and cultural officers. “The Star Keepers are a peacekeeping organization first and foremost,” he had told Gavin. “Always assess the situation before rushing headlong into battle. Seek a peaceful solution if possible.”

“Are we seeing a breach of treaty?” Gavin asked the combat and cultural officers. “Could they be peaceful?”

The two officers looked at each other. The combat officer, Qarian Neru, looked almost like a human, with curly brown hair and a spray of freckles across her nose. Her features were finer though, and her skin had a faint glow to it. Her cold gray eyes watched the enemy ship with the cunning of a fox. Beside her, the cultural officer Bardlun scrolled through a holographic display of notecards on Woraugenn culture, his thick meaty claws brushing gently at the images. His grotesquely obese frame weighed down on his seat, immense rolls of fat drooping over the sides. His canine jowls fluttered in and out as he breathed.

“Most likely not peaceful,” Qarian said. “Woraugenns rarely are.”

“It may not be a breach of treaty, though,” Bardlun said, his deep voice reverberating through the bridge. “Many splinter groups were displeased with the treaty. It could simply be one of them stirring up trouble.”

“Or it could be pirates,” the pilot suggested. Gavin glanced up at her to see her green eyes gleam, as though the prospect excited her.

“Or maybe it’s some rebellious Woraugenn teenagers,” Long Tail said. “Took their parents’ warship out for a joyride.”

The pilot blushed and looked down. Gavin forced down a smile again.

“It could be pirates,” Bardlun conceded.

Gavin thought for a minute. Nothing about this appeared anything more than a run-of-the-mill peacekeeping assignment. One alien group overstepping their bounds toward another alien group. So, standard protocol then. Gavin almost felt a little disappointed. He ran through the procedure in his mind. The procedure he’d watched a hundred times under two captains. Have the cultural officer contact them, negotiate with them, talk them down. If they prove hostile or indolent, send it to the combat officer and let her force them to leave.

“Alright,” Gavin said, pointing to Bardlun. “Ambassador, you’re up first. Find out what they’re here for.”

Gavin waited, watching for either officer’s reaction, nervousness growing in his chest as the young academy student inside him toyed with the possibility that he might have made a bad call. The two officers looked at each other and nodded. “Yes, captain,” Bardlun said and spun his seat around to face Long Tail. “Open a channel,” he said.

“Yes, sir,” Long Tail replied, tapping his console. A cylinder of light lit around the platform he stood on. Gavin let out his breath, relief as the pressure that came with beginning his first command started to evaporate. Long Tail tapped at the holograms around him with his tiny claws. “Star Keeper Corps vessel 192463, contacting unidentified Woraugenn vessel. Do you read me?”

A square image appeared on the surface of the cylinder. A hideous green face oozing with slime and baring thin pointed teeth scowled at Long Tail, its eyestalks leering down at the small lizard. Gavin stared at the face, remembering the pictures and videos of his father’s war, the images in his textbooks. His heart thumped with momentary excitement as he remembered all the stories he’d grown up with, all the stories of his father’s heroism. Beside him, Aghri made an odd, swallowing noise in the back of his throat. Out of the corner of his eye, Gavin saw the first officer’s hand grasp at the damaged flesh of his right ear. The Woraugenn opened its mouth and spoke in a garbled, phlegm-filled language that Gavin couldn’t understand.

“Language and dialect?” Bardlun said.

Long Tail shifted his eyes past the Woraugenn image to focus on Bardlun. “Sounds like Glyx,” he said. “Eastern Cave dialect.”

Bardlun rubbed at his blubbery chin. He tapped the notecards in front of him. They expanded and stuck themselves on the side of Long Tail’s cylinder, displaying the information. Bardlun flipped through them, stopping on one card reading “Glycene Cultural Branch.” Gavin could read several shorthand details on the basic customs of the overall group, with charts on the differences between various subgroups. Bardlun’s watery eyes scanned the notes for barely a second before brushing the notes away with a wave of his heavy arm. “Does he speak Ubar?” the cultural officer asked Long Tail.

Long Tail repeated the question for the Woraugenn. “No,” Long Tail said. “He does not.”

Bardlun turned to Gavin. “Full room mode?” he asked.

Gavin nodded. “Alright,” he said.

Bardlun turned back to Long Tail. “You’ll need to translate, Long Tail.”

“Yes, sir.” Long Tail tapped a command into his cylinder. The light emitting from the platform below him expanded outward, wrapping around Bardlun and forming a large white circle taking up a fourth of the bridge. The edge of the light came up almost to the tips of Gavin’s shoes. Within the circle, Bardlun sat in a flat empty plane. Sitting across from him, the full body of the Woraugenn soldier sat in Long Tail’s position. When Gavin squinted, he could see Long Tail still floating beneath the Woraugenn’s image, as if the Woraugenn were a transparent second skin. The Woraugenn’s tongue flicked out, slithering over its dripping teeth. Its thick, muscular arms clenched at its side, much of its bulk covered in rubbery black armor.

Bardlun met the Woraugenn’s eyes, touching his claw to his left shoulder and sliding it across his chest. “Good hunting,” he said, his deep voice carrying an edge of force to it. “I am Ambassador Bardlun of Pindar Volga, cultural officer of the starship Arrowhead.” He placed his palms together before him. “May we dine?”

The Woraugenn smiled, and mirrored Bardlun’s gestures. He said something in his own language. A second later, Long Tail’s voice translated. “We shall.” The Woraugenn’s hands clenched as if crushing something between them.

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Journal: Love Interests

Journal: Love Interests
by Paul Adams

Today, my thoughts center on the concept of love interests and a few of the issues surrounding them. See, a good romance is a difficult thing to nail, and there are way too many books, movies, TV series, and other forms of story-driven media in which the romance is the worst aspect of it, or the love interest character themselves are the one character that the story could do without. Today I will detail two specific trends that I have noticed, and try to work out a possible remedy for them.

The Mary Jane Effect

So the Mary Jane Effect is a common occurrence that I have named after Spider-Man’s long-running love interest Mary Jane Watson. This phenomenon occurs when a character, most commonly the love interest, is a complex and thoroughly fleshed out character in their own right in their original version, but, because of their role as “the love interest,” are sapped of all personality and turned into little more than “a generic love interest.”

In the original comics, Mary Jane was not written to be a love interest. In fact, the character was created and written to contrast with the actual love interest of Gwen Stacy. She was a type of “anti-love interest,” a character designed to show how much better Gwen was by comparison. Because of this, Gwen became very much the “generic love interest” as mentioned earlier, while Mary Jane was allowed to develop and grow into an interesting and complex character. The story moved forward, Gwen died, Mary Jane became Peter’s shoulder to cry on, and eventually, their relationship came to its natural conclusion and Peter and Mary Jane were married.

Unfortunately, most media adaptations of the Spider-Man comics came after this point in time, thus, because she was Peter’s official undeniable wife by this time, Mary Jane was the one cast in the love interest role in those adaptations. And because she was “the love interest” in those adaptations, she became nothing more than a “generic love interest.” Interestingly, because of this, Gwen Stacy was then written specifically to contrast with Mary Jane in the Amazing Spider-Man series of films, in a sort of reverse Mary Jane Effect.

Mary Jane is the most obvious and well-known example of this effect, but it has cropped up in a number of other adaptations, such as Chi Chi in Dragonball Evolution, Annabeth Chase in the Percy Jackson movies, and most if not all of the love interests portrayed in far too many superhero movie adaptations.

CW Love Interest Syndrome

If the Mary Jane Effect has one saving grace, it is that its victims are just boring. In the case of this next phenomenon, however, those who suffer from it become tiring, infuriating, and often downright intolerable. I’ve named this phenomenon after the programming channel called the CW, who are notorious for their instances of it. The effects of this syndrome are the result of the writers of a work being incapable of doing anything with the love interest besides making them a minor antagonist any time they appear.

Perhaps the CW’s most maddening example of this is Smallville’s Lana Lang. Lana Lang is introduced as the object of our hero Clark’s desire, and many episodes center or at least include his attempts to gain her affections. While this was all well and good for a while, after a while, Lana’s appearances in each episode tended to go something like this.

Some superpowered villain is threatening innocent people.

Clark needs to stop the villain, but his doing so will conflict in some way with Lana’s expectations of him.

Clark chooses to save the day, even if it means losing Lana in the process.

The audience is treated to a truly, truly, wonderful and not-at-all unenjoyable scene of Lana chewing him out and telling him he’s a worthless piece of trash.

The next episode starts with Clark working to repair the relationship.

Rinse and repeat, for seven endless seasons.

After a while, you start to wonder why Clark is even remotely attracted to her any more, or if either of them actually has any real emotion connection with the other outside of simple sexual attraction.

An interesting case study of this syndrome, one that I feel truly demonstrates the CW’s true ineptitude in this matter, is their handling of Laurel and Felicity in their series Arrow. When the series began, Laurel was introduced as Oliver’s intended love interest. And right from the beginning, Laurel proved herself to be an almost uncanny recreation of Lana, filling the exact same role Lana did in every episode, and spending way too much of her dialogue telling off Oliver and spelling out exactly what was wrong with him in every single scene between them.

Then came Felicity, a quirky computer geek that Oliver recruited to be his tech support on his missions. Felicity was a fun and interesting character who contributed to every episode she appeared in and worked well off of Oliver’s stern demeanor. Naturally, most of the show’s following gravitated to her as a far superior alternative to Laurel’s tired and aggravating portrayal.

When the show moved into its third season, the creators seemed to take the hint and listened to their fans, shifting Oliver’s affections to Felicity and making her the full-time love interest. In what might be the fastest character derailment ever recorded, over night, Laurel became an interesting and complex character, contributing to the story and following a strong character arc of her own, while Felicity soon became one of the most insufferable and obnoxious characters on television, existing only to tear Oliver down and make him hate himself for doing what he had to do.

Both of these phenomena appear far too commonly in fiction, and, I feel, have been major contributing factors to the general stigma many have toward romances in other genres. Because of these occurrences, the concept of a love interest in fiction has come to be seen as either contributing nothing to the plot or making everything worse with its mere presence. However, like just about everything else in fiction, it can be done well if handled properly.

What seems to be a possible solution to the Mary Jane Effect, and “generic love interests” in general, is to write a character first before you write a romance. Mary Jane, as well as Chi Chi, Annabeth, and various other superhero love interests, were not inherently written to be love interests. They were written to be characters first. Mary Jane started out as the anti-love interest, which led to Peter falling in love with her for who she was. Annabeth was written to be a complex character who developed a strong and loving friendship with Percy, and romantic interest didn’t really even start to grow between them until the third book. In Dragonball, the character of Son Goku had no concept of romance at all, and didn’t really even grasp the concept of male and female. Chi Chi was a side supporting character who tricked Goku into marrying her. In each one of these, the characters were characters first, their role as love interest came naturally and in the best interest of the story itself.

As for the CW Love Interest Syndrome, I feel a remedy is going to be a little more complicated, but not undoable. For this, I think I will turn to Annabeth Chase of the Percy Jackson books, not the movies. What makes Annabeth and Percy’s relationship work in the end comes down to three things. A) Annabeth was established as her own character first before developing a romance with Percy; B) A genuine emotional connection was formed between them, so that the reader knew that, without a doubt, even when they fought or got mad at each other, they truly did care about one another; and C) the author made sure that the story was better when Annabeth was around, not worse.

Of course, we’ve already dealt with the first, but I feel it does still apply. Lana and Laurel would both have been better characters if they had actually been characters beforehand. As for a genuine emotional connection, I look back over Lana’s entire run on Smallville, and I can’t for the life of me remember a moment when I felt as though Lana and Clark actually cared about each other outside of wanting to get in each other’s pants. And of course, making sure that the story is better when the love interest comes around, not worse. I feel this tends to go a long way toward getting the reader or viewer on the side of the romance. If everything gets worse whenever the love interest comes around, of course the audience wouldn’t want them together with the main character. We’re supposed to want the main character to be happy, aren’t we? Not tormented for the rest of their natural life. In the cases of Lana, Laurel, and Felicity, any time they came on screen, the story ground to a halt and the situation became that much worse for everyone else in the cast. But when Annabeth and other better written love interests came around, they contributed to the plot, actively helping to resolve each given situation, instead of hindering it. In the third book of the series, Annabeth goes missing for a time, and the audience felt her absence just as much as Percy did. And that’s how I think any good love interest should be handled. The audience should miss them when they are not around, instead of groaning when they are.

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Into the Fire

The following is an excerpt from a story idea I've been working on. I hope you enjoy reading it.

Star Keepers: 
Into the Fire
by
Paul Adams

Aghri awoke to a flash of light just outside his hovel tree.

BOOM!

His eyes snapped open. Bright light glowed through the thin membrane of the tree surrounding him.

BOOM!

Another flash of light. The sounds of his people screaming and running penetrated the tree. Aghri dug his claws into the bark, the rubbery material separating easily beneath them. A blast of heat washed over him as he stuck his head out into the open air.

The jungle around him was awash with flame. Hundreds of trees burned. Several had been snapped in two and lay smoldering on the ground. Hovel trees were melting under the intense heat, dissolving into gummy, hissing lumps. A group of Witani ran past, none even glancing at Aghri as they rushed to save their families from the horror.

Aghri scrambled out of his tree, a wave of panic gripping him as he stared at the towering flames. In his religion, Vask was the god of fire, a cruel and vindictive god who often killed on a whim and sometimes wiped out entire forests at a time. The only reason the other gods allowed him to live was because of his flame’s restorative powers. In those horrible orange tendrils ravaging their way through Aghri’s home, he felt almost as if he could see Vask’s face in them, cackling with sadistic laughter.

“Aghri!”

A pair of long arms emerged from the darkness and wrapped themselves around Aghri, pulling him away from the flames. His mother held him close. She nuzzled him with her mouth, sniffing slightly. Her long, thin arms belied surprising strength, pressing him flat against her large, protruding belly.

Loosening her grip on Aghri, she gazed at him with her yellow eyes, wrinkled around the edges in a pattern that stretched down and around her snout. Beyond her, Aghri’s father stood with another young Witani nearly identical to Aghri. Aghri’s uncle Masqa stood nearby, watching the skies with a grim expression.

“What’s happening, A-Ma?” Aghri asked, looking up at his mother with concern.

“It’s going to be okay, Aghri,” she said. “It’s just . . .”

Unable to find words, she turned to her husband for help. Aghri’s father tore his gaze from the sky and looked at his wife and son. He stood over eight feet tall. His long and lanky arms dangled past his knees, ending in bony, clawed fingers. His thin neck stretched to almost a foot long, allowing him to gaze over the heads of other Witani around him.

“We’re being invaded, Aghri,” he said.

“Why?” Aghri asked. “Are the gods punishing us?”

Aghri’s uncle Masqa made a grumbling sound in his throat. Standing side-by-side, he and Aghri’s father were almost as identical as Aghri and his brother. Masqa’s body hair and tunic was a little more unkempt, though, and he lacked a few inches.

“Not likely,” Masqa said. He glanced at his brother. “These are Woraugenns.”

Aghri followed his gaze as he continued to stare into the sky. Hanging in the sky over the forest, six large metal objects hung in the air. They were greenish-gold in color and they seemed capable of holding themselves aloft like a bird. Bright red fire spewed from their faces, and wherever they hit, more fire appeared, accompanied by that same loud noise.

“What are they doing here, A-Pa?” Aghri’s brother asked.

“I don’t know, Sarbek,” his father replied. “But the United Worlds won’t stand for it. I need to get down to the consulate and call for help. Masqa, get Zhoka and the boys to the shelter.”

“Aye,” he said.

Aghri’s father knelt and pulled both of his sons toward him. “I need you to be brave and listen to your uncle. Take care of your mother and her eggling.”

“Yes, A-Pa,” they both said.

Their father got to his feet and faced his wife and brother. Placing his right hand on the left side of his stomach, he said, “Vanash carry you.”

In response, Masqa placed his right hand on his left shoulder. “Akaris protect you.”

He hurried away through the woods. Another flash of light illuminated the trees around the family, accompanied by another loud noise. “Come on,” Masqa said. He placed his hand on his sister-in-law’s shoulder. He pointed to a nearby hill. “The bunker’s on the other side of that ridge. We might make it if we run.”

The family took off up through the trees, using their clawed hands and feet to clamber through the trees with ease. Aghri stayed close to his brother, looking back at the orange flames behind them every few moments or so. “Don’t worry, Twig,” Sarbek said, patting Aghri on the arm. “Uncle Masqa says these guys are just big old snotlumps.”

Soon, the family were standing at the top of the hill, which went down a little then rose at a steady pace up to a high ridge. Aghri could see a domed metal structure just beyond. Behind them, they could see that almost their entire ravine was engulfed in flames. Thousands of trees were burning to ashes. All around them, Witani were running through the trees, trying to escape with their lives. The strange metal objects in the sky loomed over the flaming forest, observing their work like Vask’s personal angels of destruction.

Masqa cursed under his breath. “Even with Kiba getting word out, it will still take a day or so for any reinforcements to get here. The Woraugenns will have decimated half the planet by that point. How did this happen?”

Aghri and Sarbek looked at each other in fear. Their mother hunched over, her swollen belly weighing her down. Masqa let her rest on his shoulder. “What’s that?” Sarbek suddenly shouted.

Aghri and his family looked up to see a silvery object whisking through the sky toward the Woraugenn ships. This one seemed much smaller, with a sleeker, more triangular design to it. Bright, white lights flashed from the object’s nose, slamming into the nearest enemy object and making it shudder.

Masqa smiled. “I don’t believe it,” he said. “It’s a United Worlds ship. How did they get here so fast?” His eyes scanned the sky for more objects to appear, but none did.

“This one must have been in the area,” Aghri’s mother said, breathing slowly.

The sparkle that had appeared in Masqa’s eyes dimmed a little. “Yes,” he said, “Yes, that must be it. Which means we’re still in danger. Come on.”

The family ran again. All around them, red fire set their world ablaze, the loud noises they made sounding to Aghri like the giant feet of Vask stomping after him. They loped through the trees, watching as more fires sprang up in neighboring valleys all the way out to the horizon. They were about to crest the top of the ridge when Aghri’s mother caught her foot on a rock and stumbled.

“Are you okay, A-Ma?” Aghri asked, he and Sarbek rushing to her side.

“Yes, I’m alright,” she said. She stayed on her knees for a second, the Tears of Akaris dripping from her forehead. She clutched at her large belly, a strained expression on her face.

Uncle Masqa crouched beside her. “Can you go on, Zhoka?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, taking his hand and allowing him to help her up.

“Come on,” he said. “Hurry.”

They ran some more. Now the bunker stood out on the side of the opposing cliff. They just had to get to the other side, but no matter how far or how fast they seemed to go, the strange metal objects in the sky remained right behind them, bombarding the world with their red fire. The other object was still there, lighting up its foes with its white light, but it seemed to be having little effect. Suddenly Masqa stopped, tilting his head as if listening. Aghri and Sarbek listened too, picking up a faint whistling sound growing louder and louder. Aghri’s eyes widened.

“Move!” he shouted.

Something black and heavy slammed into the ridge, throwing us from our footings and down the hillside. Aghri rolled through the grass and trees, coming to a stop in a small ditch. Masqa landed beside him.

Masqa shook his head and rolled over. “Are you alright, Aghri?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Aghri said. He sat up out of the ditch and looked around. His mother and brother were a few yards away, Sarbek helping their mother to get up off the ground.

“A-Ma! Sa!” Aghri shouted, crawling up out of the ditch.

“No, wait, Aghri!” Masqa shouted, scrambling after his nephew. Aghri heard what he heard just a second too late. A second heavy object slammed into the ground right in front of him knocking him back with the sheer force of the crash. Masqa’s arms wrapped around him and they fell together in the torrent of rubble and earth. For a few seconds, everything went black.

When everything settled again, Aghri opened his eyes, his vision blurred by warm tears. No sound reached his pointed ears but a harsh ringing that echoed through his skull. After a few seconds, the ringing lessened and he could just barely hear the sound of his mother and brother calling my name.

Aghri tried to sit up and look toward them, but found himself pinned under the full weight of his uncle’s body. He could see his uncle’s face from where he was, his eyes closed and his breathing labored. Red, glistening scratches covered most of his face and his hair was full of dirt. Aghri did his best to shift out from under his uncle and saw his mother and brother scrambling around a big, black orb to reach him. Behind them, a pair of bright, green cracks in the orb’s side.

“A-Ma!” I shouted, desperately trying to shout through all the rubble. “Sa!”

The orb cracked open, bits of shell flying everywhere, thick, wet slime oozing from the hole. A pair of thick, green limbs appeared over the edge, followed by a grotesque, deformed head. The figure inside stretched upwards, reaching to a height taller than any Witani. The creature wore a thick carapace around its torso and the top of its head, while a pair of eyestalks ending in sickly yellow eyes sprouted up from a pair of holes in its makeshift helmet. Up above them, another creature had emerged from the first orb. The creature held out its right arm. From the center of what passed for a palm on the creature sprouted a long flat blade of the same material as the creature's carapace.

The creatures studied their surroundings for a moment. The closest gave Aghri and Masqa a passing glance where they lay on the ground. Deciding they were no threat, it turned on Aghri’s mother and Sarbek. It grabbed them one in each hand, throwing her to the ground roughly and demanding something in a language that seemed half-spittle and half-gibberish, holding his sword to their throats.

“Leave them alone,” Aghri shouted, fighting to get out from under Masqa.

The second creature placed his hand on Aghri’s shoulder just as he was making headway pulling him with a mighty yank out from under his uncle. Aghri struggled and fought, sinking his claws into his captor’s skin, but to no avail. The monster’s flesh seemed to be as jellylike and moldable as the bark of a hovel tree. The second he removed his claws, the skin simply grew back.

“Leave him alone!” Aghri’s mother demanded. “Why are you doing this?”

The first creature shouted something at her and struck her across the face with the back of its hand. The creature stood over his mother, shouting at her in its strange tongue. It raised its sword over its head.

“A-Ma!” Aghri shouted. He opened his mouth full of sharp teeth and bit into his captor’s arm. It tasted like rancid mucus. The monster growled, shouting at Aghri. Its other hand grabbed at Aghri’s ear and pulled at him, its claws digging into the flesh and making Aghri’s eyes well up.

 “No!” Sarbek shouted. He used the distraction Aghri had caused to break away from the monster and ram into the one holding Aghri, causing it to not only drop Aghri, but also tear away a good chunk of his ear. Aghri fell to the ground, hot blood running down the side of his head. He felt his mother at his side, scooping him up in her arms. Nearby his brother was attacking Aghri’s captor with everything he had, clawing and biting like a rabid animal. “Sa, stop!” Aghri’s mother yelled.

Aghri looked up at his mother in confusion, before noticing the other monster approaching Sarbek from behind. Before Sarbek could process his mother’s warning, the creature grabbed him by the nape of his neck and pulled him off its companion. The creature raised its sword. Aghri’s mother screamed as the blade cut right through his brother. Tears filled Aghri’s eyes and he cried out, a peal of anguish he felt more than heard through his ruined ear. Sarbek’s body fell to the ground in two pieces, not moving, blood pooling around him, his eyes open and staring blankly into space. Rage filled him and he struggled to get free of his mother’s arms, but she held on to him as tightly as possible. The pain in his ear forced him to collapse again. He stared up at the monsters with hatred, wanting nothing more than to make them suffer.

The creatures rounded on Aghri and his mother. They raised their swords in unison.

Two things happened at once. A bright flash lit up the world around them, while Masqa leapt over their heads and tackled one of the creatures. The other creature’s head exploded in a splatter of green goo. Its body fell to the ground, revealing a strange, new creature standing behind it. This creature stood shorter than any adult Witani Aghri had ever seen, but still a head taller than Aghri was now. This creature had a short neck, a flat face, and softer hair that draped around its shoulders in a wild, unkempt fashion. It had clear, blue eyes that seemed to dance in the firelight. The creature wore a strange, silvery uniform just like the ship in the sky above and it held a small object in its hand that glowed with the same white light being fired from the ship.

The creature moved with surprising grace for its awkward frame, pulling the monster off of Aghri’s uncle, despite being nearly half its size. The monster screeched and turned on its new opponent and raised its sword to stab him, but the new creature pulled a small trigger on the object in its hand, blasting the creature’s chest with white energy, leaving a gaping hole in its chest and armor. The creature gaped at its opponent for a second before toppling over next to its companion.

The new creature dropped its weapon to its side and turned to Aghri and his family. It bent and offered Masqa a hand, helping him up. It spoke something in a language Aghri didn’t understand, but to his surprise, Masqa replied in the same language. The creature then bent over Sarbek’s body, feeling his vitals, while Masqa helped Aghri and his mother to their feet. Aghri’s mother pulled away from her brother-in-law and flung herself onto her son’s body while Aghri clung to his uncle.

“Masqa,” Aghri started, but he couldn’t find any more words.

Masqa bent to look his nephew over. He tore off a patch of his tunic and pressed it against Aghri’s destroyed ear. “It’s going to be okay, Aghri,” he said gently. He gestured at the creature standing nearby. “This is a Human from the United Worlds. He’s here to help us. His name is Orion Kent.”

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