Tropes Galore

J.C. recently wrote about about recognizing tropes in your writing and why you shouldn't be turned off by them.  I couldn't agree more with his statements. It reminds me of the definition provided on the homepage of tvtropes.org:

"Tropes are devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members' minds and expectations. On the whole, tropes are not clichés. The word clichéd means 'stereotyped and trite.' In other words, dull and uninteresting."

This is a wiki that catalogs tropes for tv, movies, books, comics, radio, and other entertainment.  It's extremely comprehensive and will be the single biggest time suck you will ever find on the internet.

There are currently three short pages for J.C. Hutchins's work:

• 7th Son
• Personal Effects
• Personal Effects: Dark Art

This was my favorite trope listed on these pages:

Creating a page for The 33 would be fun to do at some point in the future.  These are the first few that instantly come to mind:

• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits (The 33)
• Founder of the Kingdom (Mr. Inns)
• Mass Teleportation (The Farmhouse)
• Myth Arc (one story-telling structure for this series)
• Monster of the Week (another structure J.C. plans to use for this series)

Clearly, The 33 is not in any way original.  I would even advise against reading The 33 if you want something original, but if that was your criteria for not liking something, then I would recommend locking yourself in room and never read, watch, or listen to anything ever again.  TV Tropes clearly shows everything is interrelated, whether intentional or not.  This is why I hate it when people crap all over James Cameron's Avatar based on trope recognition alone.  I liked Dances with Wolves, I also liked Fern Gully, I also liked Pocahontas.  Okay, so as an environmentalist maybe I'm not the most objective of critics for those types of movies, so I'd recommend reading  J.C.'s review of Avatar.

I think part of the reason I enjoyed 7th Son on a different level than some of my friends was that I had not seen these tropes so much in other literature.  Now that I have expanded my experience in SF/F genre the connections are far more clear.  This doesn't negate that sense of awe, but enhances it.

I first found tvtropes.org when looking deeper into the content of the Harry Potter series.  That book series appears to have absolutely no original content whatsoever.  That being said, I have enjoyed that series even more since learning about some of JKR's influences and I can truly marvel at what made that story so spectacular.  Individual components made it a page-turner, but was how everything came together as a collective whole, that made it a masterpiece.  I still feel like not enough attention has been given to the masterful way JKR has composed the series with ring composition or the shear magnitude of blatant and subtle foreshadowing of every major and minor plot element.

I think that while both 7th Son and The 33 are in some ways unoriginal, the way the stories are crafted and the way characters interact with each other are just unique enough to really make it enjoyable. The medium in how its being told also adds a point towards originality.   

I know that fans of J.C. also tend to enjoy podcasts and ARGs.  If the TV Tropes website is at all intriguing I'd recommend checking out the podcast for this website: On the Tropes.  They also had this brilliant web-series and ARG that has since ended.  It's a show within a show called Echo Chamber:

First Episode in and Spin-offs are Already Setup

J.C. mention in an interview that he hopes to have spin-off series written by some of his other author friends.  This would be rad, even though I’d prefer the content by J.C., I’d still consume anything that had at least his partial involvement.

I was little bit surprised with all the opportunities this first episode opened up for possible spin-offs.  There were obvious lines about Five-by-Five and the other sub-branches of The 33, but then there were unexpected references to gods and martians; this story will go anywhere.  Well, I guess that’s good for universe you hope to expand, but it also feels a bit overwhelming to have this massive info dump of info in the first episode.

“'We’re not for hire, and we don’t answer to anybody.' Creel snickered.'Right. Because that’d be inconvenient. So. Being above the law and all, does the government know you exist?' 'The U.S. government? Sure, some of it does.' 'Yeah? Does it approve of your world-saving?'  'Some of it does.'”

Here I feel there is one of the great opportunities for a spin-off into neat, murky, political series. It was relieved that J.C. didn't pigeonhole The 33’s political situation into a solid position.  It seems like everyone wants to have clear-cut delineations in politics.  Ambiguity, in this instance, is great.  I really hope this story can utilize themes of both straightforward good vs evil, while also containing stories of hard decisions and ethically ambiguous characters.

“'Actually,' Bliss said, 'we’re up to World War VII now.' 'Eh?'”

Yep, that’s another prequel side series waiting to happen.

33 Questions (S01E01)

“'Any questions?' 'Like, a million,' Creel said. 'Great. Make a list. You've got thirty more weeks to ask ’em.'”

The following is my list of thirty-three questions I have now that I want to see answered by end of the series and I will check them off as I go along. (My personal speculation in parentheses.)

1. Who is Mr. Ins (Is he a character we will be introduced to as someone else?) 
2. What is Mr. Ins’s true motive behind The 33? 
3. Where can the Farmhouse travel? (Mars, underwater, space?) 
4. What is Adison Creel’s back-story? 
5. What makes the recruits so unique? 
6. How good is Cookies’s cooking? 
7. What is Bliss’s back-story? (Was she a hipster before it was cool?) 
8. What’s the deal with Adison Creel’s flask? 
9. Is the farmhouse truly secure in a cornfield? (Will a random farmer come across it, do they know, will google maps take a picture, will the evil villains find it?)
10. Will Adison Creel finish his duty after 33 weeks? (Die, relieved, or stay on?) 
11. Who are the gods? (Is like a Marvel universe type understanding of gods or a Mur Lafferty-type situation?) 
12. What are all the sub-branches of The 33? 
13. What is with the mismatched random plate-where? (are they just thrifty?) 
14. “It’s stitched into your bone marrow. That’s what the nanorgtech injection was. You know, after your recruitment? From the doctor? The Swede? The stuff self-replicated. It’s embedded in every bone in your body. You’re now a walking, talking GPS and p-radio transmitter-receiver.”         Am I missing something? Does this refer to nanotechnology or something more specific? Why does it have an extra “r” and “g”. This shouldn't distract me this much. but it does. 
15. What are the martians like?
16. Is there life on any other planets besides Earth and Mars?
17. Are there other bases like The Farmhouse?

    

    Current Base Location

18. Who is the Swedish doctor? (Does she have a DNAC computer?)
19. Will we see politics come into play?
20. How was Azael able to transport?
21. Where does the money come from for the resources for The 33?
22. Why does the idea of a mismatched team seem like a tactical advantage? (Obviously it’s an important literary advantage.)
23. What is GIO up to? (This must be just the main plot for this arc of Pramantha.)
24. Did the swingers at the beginning of the story have any idea what they were doing when they killed themselves? (Does the reader?)
25. What is the survival rate of the volunteers at The 33?
26. Why Nebraska?
27. Is Nebraska the semi-permanent location of The Farmhouse when not on missions?
    
28. Have any civilians noticed any strange phenomena surround The 33 and their missions?
29. Will we get new cover art for each installment of every part of the story?
30. How old is Mr. Ins? What constitutes "really old"?
31. What or who is Driver, Garage, and Booster?
32. Will we see Mad_Ana's kid?
33. Why the name “The 33”?

Hopes for the Future (S01E01)

Cookie

Cookie’s awesome. She probably plays the smallest bit part in this entire episode, but this was a nice, funny introduction to the old woman. I hope she’s as much of a smart-ass in the future. Although she’s probably just window dressing to the plot. What tops off this character for me though, is the voice. Kudos to J. C. on that.

The Farmhouse

I’m loving the location of their base of operations: The Farmhouse in Nebraska (or wherever). The cover makes a little more sense now.  This house reminds me of of a truly concealed TARDIS.  I never watched Doctor Who, so its not blasphemy for me to say I like the idea of The Farmhouse a lot better.

“Creel observed, processed and filed this, as he always did, in a few seconds. Conclusion: Like the kitchen and dining room and what little else he’d seen of the Farmhouse, this place didn’t feel like a home— it felt like Home, a mythical breed of warmth one associated with nostalgia and childhood. A room that promised safety and comfort. ‘Clever,’ he whispered.”

I love this place. Wicked good description of the "soul of this place", to use a phrase from Momma Smith in 7th Son. The Farmhouse is just waiting to get infiltrated by an evil villain at some point in time with that type of description. One of my favorite parts of 7th Son was the infiltration of the main base halfway through the series, so I know J.C. can pull it off here too.

Azael and Swords

I’m interested to see what happens to these Orlando Hill-type characters. When reading 7th Son, I thought Hill was a stupid tropy caricature of military generals, but was pleasantly rewarded with a real character by the end of the books. He became a more interesting over time without use of a twist. I hope these characters are unique as well.

Speculation (S01E01)

Another character attached to his flask for nefarious purposes

The Flask
What’s the deal with Addison Creed’s flask? It was mentioned a total of four times within this one episode. Ordinarily, this wouldn't mean a thing if the character was a drunk, but I’m not getting that impression. Sure, he’s living on the streets, wallowing in self-indulgence, but he also seems really on top of what’s going on. Call me overly obsessive, but I think it’s a clue of something else to come.

 He’s always checking to see were it is and the other characters looked shocked to see him drink from it after going through the portal, as if no normal person could stomach a drink after that. The real kicker that got my attention was this line:

 “…one hand inside his hoodie pocket gripping the flask— can’t lose that, lose that and you’re good as dead no matter where you go…”

Bliss
I can tell right now that Bliss is going to be the scene-stealer of the series. This is totally going to be the character that everyone quotes and associates with this book. Fans of J.C. seemed to really latch on to the Killroy 2.0 character in 7th Son, so I wouldn't be surprised if Bliss is the next character that J.C.’s Internet-savvy fan-base immortalizes.

Mad_Ana
Mad_Ana is totally going to die. I’m calling it now. She’s going to get killed within the next four episodes. She’s way too average and too much like the reader. Then again, I thought the same of John in 7th Son and he was one of the few survivors.

Zebulon Pike

“...Zeb to the tech press. Founder, Chairman, President and CEO of Sprightly, the world’s largest online retailer. If the people in those ‘world’s richest ’ lists were in a rock band, Zeb would be lead vocalist and play lead guitar. Sprightly practically invented online shopping. It mastered the dry-goods delivery model, then conquered the digital-goods market, then moved on to cloud-technology services.”

Jeff Bezos

This guy is totally Jeff Bezos. He’s obviously a combination of a lot of real-life people, but I’m getting stronger vibe of Bezos with a hint of A.U. Rookman.

33-Word Review of Pramantha: Part 1

Flying start to a tale with endless possibilities and promise of payoff. A captivating team of misfits; happy-go-lucky, suicide-pack swingers; and “all kinds of other what-the-hells”, leaves you eagerly awaiting the next installment.

Prologue and Recommendation

Spectacular start to what I expect will have a satisfying story arc, even if the universe in which this is written continues indefinitely.  The drunk, happy-go-lucky, swingers suddenly entering a suicide pack was brilliantly told in a horrific and eerie tone.  This was made ten time creepier by the fact that the characters were entranced in a state of complete bliss.  The giddy excitement I felt before reading this story was instantly replaced with giddy horror at what I was reading.  The slow fade to the iconic Celldweller music at the end of the prologue gave it the distinct sensation of a cold opening from TV shows.  Descriptively cinematic, the strongest comparison I can make is to the prologue that featured a ten year old political assassin from the opening of 7th Son.

This is such a difficult story to recommend to people.  I know many of my friends and family would be instantly turned off by this graphic introduction.  By no means lacking in gore, I still feel fans of Scott Sigler and Stephen King might get the impression this is a very tame and “PG-13” description.  I think the tone sets up, not so much a horror, but a thriller novel.

To me, recommendations are the single most difficult form of writing.  I can still remember the bark of laughter from my roommate when I gave him one of my physical copies of 7th Son and the first thing he does is read aloud, “Saturday sex with Sarah was the best.”  I had to tell him to tell him to read the prologue first just to get him to stop laughing.

Since I want to focus mainly on story analysis here, my recommendations will be brief, 33-words per episode.  I hope that other fans will evangelize the book, as I plan to do, on Amazon, Goodreads, Facebook, and Twitter.  This blog is meant to be more of a way to process my speculation and opinions of each episode and maybe even stimulate thoughtful discussion for other fans.  Nothing would delight me more than to see a fan podcast spring up for this series.

Welcome

J. C. Hutchins’s 7th Son will always be for me a simultaneous experience of escapist fluff perfectly blended with thoughtful philosophical concepts.   The 7th Son series stands up to a biennial rereading for both the purpose thrills (despite knowing the ending) and thoughtful analysis of deeper themes and meanings.  

jchutchins.net/7th-son-original-podcast-trilogy

I’m still a little upset that I will never get the chance to read these book for the first time again.  While overjoyed with the satisfying and epic conclusion, the feeling of anticipation was lost when I finished that last episode on Christmas night, 2007.  I lost the opportunity to speculate what was going to happen next and how the story was going to eventually end. While I can still remember the more powerful emotions from that first read-through, the specifics elude me and I wish I could recall some of that speculation.

Now I’m writing this blog as a public record of what I anticipate and hope will happen in this new adventure.  2,229 days after I finished 7th Son, The 33 was released. After reading this first episode I have complete confidence that the wait was well worth it.  There are only two things I hope to take away from the new reading experience: to be entertained, and to think.  I look forward to sharing my speculation, my questions, my hopes for future installments.