Tag Archives: plot

plot jealousy

me and Cat were talking today about how when a character falls in love, the object of their affection has to become their greatest weakness. I re-watched Hancock tonight, and that premise is so beautifully written into the film that I really, really wish I’d thought of it first.

*spoilers ahead, people!*

Hancock is the only superhero on earth, and he’s a lonely, drunken asshole. Until a PR guy takes him on, and dares him to face the fact that he’s running, and that he will never be happy until he accepts his role as hero and saviour.

That guy’s wife also just happens to be Hancock’s other half – his wife, before he had his head bashed in 80 years earlier and forgot everything.

They are angels, gods – superheroes. They are immortal until they are close to their other half. Then they are graced with mortality, with the ability to live, and love, and die. Dying being the operative part.

Unfortunately, the universe wants to keep Hancock alive, i.e. keep he and his wife apart, so any time they come close, she is wounded to get to him.

I think my favourite scene is after he’s been shot and admitted to hospital and his wife comes to see him and to explain. She shows him the scars on his own body – each a testament to his saving her throughout history. She knows his body intimately, and his scars are signs of a deep and selfless love, in a life where he thought he had no one.

Then he has to fly as far from her as he can go, to save her life.

It’s a tragic love story in the best possible way. The wife stays with her human husband – who is equally heroic in his quieter, more human way. She exercises her free will. But watching over her, and eternal with her, is her other half.

Ah sigh. Plot jealousy.

loopholes

Blogger Decadence and I have been having a bit of a mammoth discussion, and it’s come around to what it takes for a hero/ine to break the habit of a lifetime and open up to somebody else.

This really is tricky, because writers put a huge amount of work into making their characters’ motivations for not being together believable. Tthey don’t always put enough work into making the breakdown of those reasons as believable, and it’s often the downfall of a good romance.

The moment of capitulation.

Luckily, there are these things called plot devices that help us out. My favourite kind is the loophole.

Decadence pointed one out in our discussion about Vishous. He knows he’s going to erase his woman’s memories, so it allows him to be and do what he would never normally let himself be and do.

In this draft of my novel, I’m using the old classic: the thunderstorm. Hero/ine (sadly, it’s mostly the heroine) is terrified of thunderstorms for whatever reason, and finds herself somewhere alone with the hero when it breaks. Et voila, he has to step in and comfort her, no matter what their current understanding.

And there was an absolute corker in tonight’s episode of The Vampire Diaries. I’ve made my opinion known, that we watch the show because we ship Elena and Damon – which means, of course, that they can never have consummation or the show will die.

But tonight one of those perfect loopholes appeared and we got a glimpse of what we want but can never have: he caught her without her necklace (the one that stops him from being able to compel her) and could tell her, just once, exactly what he feels.

Just before he wiped her memory and gave her the necklace back.

(eejit)