If you're wondering about my name, it is a pseudo-random string of alphanumeric characters lacking any meaning. Let's just say I grew bored of thinking of new names, since they were all taken.

If you're wondering about anything else about me, I'm afraid you'll be disappointed. I'm male, in my twenties, working on the last steps for a masters in an unspecified engineering field.

Commentary on "Stay": (take two, now without being sleep depraved)

Okay, let me start with some general commentary by saying that "Stay" is the first story I've ever written. Period. I've never taken a lit. class, never written one in school, nothing. I don't know why I suddenly got the urge to do one. I'm not really that creative strictly speaking, I'm more for analyzing facts and drawing conclusions. This story is essentially the result of an internal debate, translated into a fictional story. If I ever write another story, it will most likely be a similar deal. I do have a few ideas, mostly dealing with various aspects of morality and what heroism is. The DC universe is a good setting, simply because it includes rather extreme levels of power, thus making the importance of the individual rather explicit. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your point of view), I don't have a lot of time. Constructing a debate is not always easy, and translating it into a narrative is even worse. Especially when you need some sort of plot to justify it all, which is definitely my kryptonite (har har). Apart from morality, I also have this strange notion to tackle Wonder Woman's view of relationships and sexuality simply because she tends to be given modern western values, which doesn't make a lot of sense given her background. It has the same aforementioned problem though, I'll need a context or it will be hard to justify its existence. As it stands, the only way any of these ideas will come to fruition is if someone else either desperately wishes to write a story about it or if someone hands me a fairly solid plot in which I can include it.

I should perhaps also note that whatever stories I might write will most likely end up effectively being AU. While I generally prefer the comics to the cartoon, I haven't actually picked up a JLA comic in the last two years, and even before that I wasn't a big fan. I've read a bit of Batman and a tiny amount of Superman and Wonder Woman, but that was also a long time ago. I've watched most of the JL/JLU cartoons, so I'm more familiar with that universe by now, but never saw any of the Batman cartoons. As a general rule, I will most likely set it in the cartoon universe, but influence it with events and characters from the comic (meaning Barbara will be Oracle, Cassandra Batgirl, Donna will exist etc.)

Moving on to the actual story; one of the problems I have with DC is their tendency to portrait their characters as flawless. Whatever problems they have always seems to be either brushed aside, or resolved by the time you reach the next page. That bothers me. Realistically speaking, they are exposed to rather severe psychological stress, and that should lead to rather severe psychological problems. Okay fine, so they are heroes, but they are still human (and yes, I realize the irony of that statement given that a sizeable number of DC characters are biologically speaking, in fact, not human). I want them to be human, with all that entails. Perfect characters doesn't interest me in the slightest. Just as I want to see them at their best, determined, courageous and self-sacrificing, I want to see them at their lowest, see them break. I want to see them fall apart and try to pick up the pieces. Be greedy, violent, rude, just like anyone else. For me, it is far more interesting to see a character like that than someone who can take anything life throws at them with a smile. Some might regard it as being weak, but I don't. I consider it being believable. To use a metaphor; the difference between courage and stupidity is that the courageous tries to deal with his fears, the stupid isn't afraid in the first place. But sometimes, courage fails even the bravest, and that's what I want to see. Expecting anything else of a character is unreasonable, and having them manage it anyway just makes me lose interest.

Okay, so as for the story, basically I wanted to do something a bit darker that adheres to the above. I decided to make it a romance because it can so easily involve some of the most powerful emotions from both ends of the spectrum (love, hate, sorrow etc.). Plus, it would spare me the effort of making an actual plot. I picked the BM/WW pairing because it's one of the few fictional pairings that I actually like. It's one of those that can go in practically any direction and still feel real. Besides, come on, it practically writes itself. I decided to try it from Wonder Woman's perspective, simply because while Batman is certainly an interesting character to explore, he already has a fairly well-established dark side. Finally, I decided to focus on how much stress and frustration these characters must be feeling, doing what they do. Given this to work with, making sex (another thing DC seems to completely ignore) the way to cope was fairly natural. I considered violence, drugs and denial, but the latter two didn't really appeal to me and the former has been done (I did consider including it, but eventually went for sorrow rather than anger).

I'm not sure how well I did. WW being a little out-of-character? Maybe, but given what I tried to do, I would probably have failed if I was completely true to character. I didn't intend to depict her as weak and needy, or trying to be misogynic, though I can understand if someone might view it that way. I wanted her to be human, trying and failing to deal with love and what she does, and making decisions that may not be the smart or the right thing to do as a result. Love in particular seems to be one of those things that really screw us up, and it's not always pretty. We rarely get to pick our emotions, and no one should be immune to them, no matter how strong they might be considered to be. I don't think it's a weakness to rely on others, especially not when you're in love, and I tried to make that show. I guess I'm just a hopeless romantic; a romantic because I want to believe that love conquers all etc., and hopeless because I don't. Then again, isn't that what fiction is for?

I agonized quite a bit over the actual content. I started out with a pretty good idea of the key points I wanted to include given that I had my informal arguments as a starting point. Translating it into a story, while more difficult than I had anticipated, wasn't that big of a problem (if it turned out okay). The difficult part was trying to make it fit with everything else while maintaining some sort of narrative flow. I ended up adding, removing and changing entire sections several times, and it always seemed to cause something else not to fit. I'm still not really happy about it turned out, but I had to stop at some point. A big part of why I published it was so it would give it a sense of finality and so I would stop editing.

I'm not sure how well the background turned out. I knew I needed two things: one, some way to show that their jobs are not a dance on roses and in fact rather stressful, and two, something to trigger the otherwise emotionally unavailable Batman to take the plunge. I decided on the generic disaster with civilian casualties, including a reminder of Batman's own reason for being as the trigger. What I'm unsure about is whether it was too much or too little. Rather than expanding on the scenario, I tried to make it sound like something not uncommon, to give the impression of a slow deterioration of their resistance that finally reached the breaking point, rather than just a sudden burst. Did it work? Right or wrong approach?

I included some discussion about the other founding members in order to show that they were not better off and that they also had to cope with it some way. Again, the whole "being human" thing. I actually wrote quite a bit more about it, including for example Superman discussing his disdain over being idolized and not being able to live up to the expectations (another thing about DC that bothers me; Superman actually being able to live up to impossible expectations). I ended up cutting most of it in order to not stray too much from the story (I never quite managed to escape the feeling of round peg - square hole). Would it have been better if I had done the expanded version and tried to make it fit?

I had a lot of trouble writing dialogue. I had a fairly good idea of what I wanted them to say, but lacking any experience, I ended up mostly improvising the speech pattern and meta-statements (i.e. the "he said", expressions and actions in the middle of dialogue). I have seen worse dialogue, but I'm still not quite happy with how it turned out. It felt rather repetitive. Comments?

Finally, I also worried about whether I should expand on the issue by trying to explain why she loved him in the first place, but eventually dropped that idea as it was one of those pieces of the puzzle I could never quite fit in. There are still some traces of it left in there, but I ultimately decided to focus on how she dealt with the feelings rather than how they came to be since that was my original goal. Any thoughts on whether I should've done it anyway?

Okay, there is the new and hopefully improved version of the commentary. I would appreciate any reviews of the story, especially if they could help me understand what I did right and what I did wrong. Don't worry about being cruel, I can take it, and I believe it's better to be aware of your flaws so that you can work on them than be blissfully unaware and have them bite you in the ass at a later date.