UA:Comic Blog

Blog #52

Friday 17 June 2011

NOTE: IF YOU'VE BEEN LIVING UNDER A ROCK AND HAVE NOT SEEN THE SERIES FINALES OF 'BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER', 'ANGEL', OR 'STARGATE UNIVERSE' BE WARNED THAT THERE ARE SPOLIERS AHEAD.

Friday's non-update on FreakAngels (combined with a tweet pointing me to Joss Whedon's top 10 writing tips) spurred a second blog idea...

ON ENDINGS...

FreakAngels is down to a mere 6 updates -- just 36 pages -- before its done. Having been a fan of Warren Ellis for quite some time, I'm sure that the ending with blow mw away (again). The 'Old Bastard' (as he calls himself) has a firm grasp on how to end a story.

This ties in to Joss Whedon's #1 tip for writing: FINISH IT! Joss has often said that unfinished stories (especially in the form of TV shows that ended with cliffhangers) is a major pet peeve of his.

Josh knows how to end a story as well. Buffy's 5th season finale could have easily been a series finally. (I've often wished that Sarah Michele Gellar had stuck to her guns and left the show at that point. While the rest of the cast continued to deliver excellent performances week in and week out for the remaining two years, SMG just phoned hers in with all the emotional depth of a comatose turtle.) And the 7th season/series finale was even more powerful (despite SMG's please-get-me-out-of-here dead-eyes performance).

Josh's ending of Angel, while some see it as a cliffhanger, achieved exactly what Josh said he set out to do in that episode: the fight against evil is never-ending, but the important thing is to keep fighting. I saw this episode again not too long ago and the ending is still one of my top all-time favorites:
        ANGEL: Personally, I want to slay the dragon. Let's get to work.
Great stuff, that.

And then there are endings that weren't supposed to be endings. Stargate Universe: Eli standing on the observation deck looking out at the FTL vortex with a Mona-Lisa-smile on his face; Destiny sails on through the FTL vortex disappearing from sight.
SERIOUSLY!?!? That's where you're going to leave us?
I understand that SyFy (What the fuck's up with that name?) and MGM made financial decisions that they needed to make in tough economic times. But still...
SERIOUSLY!?!?!

And it's the difference between satisfying endings (exemplefied by Buffy and Angel) and gut-wrenchingly unsatisfying ones (demonstrated most recently by SGU) that motivated me to have an ending in maind for Paonia Pawns before the first strip went online. I don't know all the details, but I have the broad strokes and the foreshadowing of the final crisis has been building for a while. There's still a ways to go (probably early 2013) but the ending is there and hopefully will leave my readers happy.

Two footnotes. (1) There are more stories of the PP universe beyond the end of the main story I set out to tell, but the main story is intended to stand alone as a complete work no matter which of the sequels and spin-offs I ever tell (or don't tell). (2) UA also has a definitive ending. There's a tremendously long way to go and I hope that I live long enough to get there (but at least I finally got off my ass and started telling it).

Filed under: tv

Blog #49

Friday 13 May 2011

Just watched the last-ever episode of Stargate Universe.

SON OF A FUCKING BITCH!!!!!

Filed under: tv