GI JOE: VS: STORY 2 - BEACH HEAD VS ZANDAR

AFTER THOUGHTS

Now that I got it all written and posted, time for a lil reflection.

I've said before that writing a story can take on a life of its own. Ideas pop up, sometimes get put in, etc. How this story started, well, I scrapped it and started over. The original was going to be from the perspective from Zandar. As I was writing it, it started to feel more like a wikipedia entry than a story. I have found with writing, it allows for more exploration of the world and the characters. I've used Beach Head in the diostories and Zandar, I'm not so sure. Maybe in the background. About as much visual time as Zandar in GI Joe Retaliation!

I've stated in the past that doing diostories and traditional written stories are pretty far apart. Diostories are more visual but limited to the space on the frame for text. That would include description, storytelling, and dialogue/monologue/thoughts. The need to describe the setting is no longer necessary. What gets lost is the depth of the characters. The story has to keep moving and there's often no place for a 21- page history of character (Tom Clancy was great at doing this in his pre-2000s books. If not mid-90s and earlier). Due to that, Beach Head never really had much of a personality in my diostories. With how I wrote my stories, I did what I saw fit. There were many characters who never showed up because I didn't know how I wanted them to be. Duke is a prime example of that. Serpentor also. If I wanted to use someone but wasn't entirely sure how, I relied on a mix of cartoon, comic, and filecard. Some versions weighed stronger than others.

I remember now, Beach Head got a lot of time in the diostory GAME OF DEATH. I don't remember exploring his personality in it. His personality was based heavily on the cartoon. With Beach Head being a main character (not THE main character) in this VS story, well, I still kind of skirted around what he's really like. There are some hints and it's still very cartoon based. 

Now, this is where I get into the organic part. The end of the story, the epilogue if that's what you'll call it (there are no chapters because it's supposed to be a short story!), the reader gets a glimpse of what Beach Head is into. That wasn't planned, other than him being in the hospital bed. The plan for that was like this (and notes):

-Beach Head wakes up in infirmary

-Gonzalez and Anders are there to meet him

-Anders hands him the file on Zandar who was an unknown to them (despite Beach Head knowing of Zandar, I was going to play that he didn't know what the guy was about. Not like Zartan. All he knew is Zandar was younger brother.)

-Big long ditty of Zandar which would have been most of the elements from my original draft. But even that didn't feel right. I wanted to keep him remotely mysterious. But it felt like a cheap way to go into Zandar's background, but not so much personality. Visually, it would be Beach Head looking at a file and the reader would see the contents of the file. Instead, I decided to go slightly more modern. Digital voice recorder where Zandar can (kind of) explain why Beachy was hunted. I still don't go into great details or even talk about what Zandar is.

-In the Zedd Universe, Zandar is an assassin. He has the same cloaking/blending ability as Zartan. But he's not a master of disguise. The file would reveal (or the original), that Zandar was pretty much a loner and lived on the streets of NYC (The Bronx, more specifically). A street rat, he watched people. And thus, he learned martial arts from watching and copying the movements. The point, in the end, he had no formal military training. In my mind, that led to the issue of, how could this guy take on a seasoned soldier like Beach Head? Well, Zandar doesn't play fair.

-The beef against Beach Head comes from a failed assassination of a high political officer. It was only dumb luck that Beach Head got in the way. To Zandar, that's reason enough for his hatred. Beach Head, even after the hearing, still wouldn't have a clue what Zandar's talking about. I forgot how Beach Head actually botched it. Like, he wasn't even on duty, just a bystander who got in the way. Or he bumped into the guy moving the target just far enough out of the way so Zandar couldn't take the shot.

-The original message that Anders deciphers, mentioned Beach Head specifically. I chose to leave it out to keep it more mysterious. Like the crew said, nothing's happened the prior 2 weeks. Only at the end, do we get more of the reasoning for the VS. I strongly considered having Zandar spout Shakespeare in the exact same vein as General Chang in Star Trek VI: Undiscovered Country. Afterall, Zandar is pounding on Beach Head cloaked! I went light on what Zandar said.

-The diostory was going to be just the two of them. I would have manipulated the photos pretty heavy to make Zandar just a blur during the fight. In another post, I discussed the difficulty of posing these figures whose joints were pretty much locked. The fight scene was stiff and nowhere near how I wanted it. I won't discuss how the setting looks nothing like a dense forest too.

-The voice recorder element would speed everything up and give an explanation to things. The reactions by the Greenshirts ends the story, which I felt was appropriate. Would I have preferred a larger kill count? Yes. But the mission only called for x-amount of units. I needed someone to get back to the rescue team to tell them where to go. Gonzalez, I didn't feel like killing off. In my mind, I questioned whether Zandar would kill a woman. If he had a code. If paid, yes he would. But he wasn't getting paid for this. His target was Beach Head. And it's not written, part of the reason for killing Blue and Smith is that Beach Head would have to deal with their deaths. Part of the psychological warfare Zandar was conducting.

-Beach Head has interests? Or questions? I believe, over time, Beach Head has become more thoughtful. Still hard as a rock. He's getting older and in some ways, more jagged. Yet, he knows when to soften for the good of those around him. Him wondering about the afterlife was completely organic and on the fly. That's the type of characterizations I'm referring to that I can't easily have put in a diostory. It would have taken a few frames which needed to move the story forward.

-I questioned where I should have even let the reader know that the VS is Beach Head vs Zandar. Part of me says, make it more mysterious of the characters involved; just show Beachy. But then, I considered, put the VS characters names and have people curious as to what the story is. Why is there a VS? Not a who is the VS. Tho it's very much written of whom the crew is being hunted by!

-The diostory version was going to end with a big misunderstanding. Beach Head was after Zandar for an assassination. But Zandar would explain, in the end, it wasn't him. In that regard, it was really going to be Beach Head vs Zandar

There are probably a lot more thoughts and ideas, but they escape me as the moment. Here, check out a few raw images of what the diostory would have entailed.