Categorizing this novel is a bit tough for me, but of all the stories
I've written, I think this one is closet to my heart -- not because
I've lived through anything like what Scott survived, but because it
allowed me to explore some things I've wanted to explore, and meet some
challenges. It's a dark story, but it's not a tragedy by any
means -- quite the opposite. Some might want to characterize it
as 'hurt-comfort,' yet in my experience, hurt-comfort is typically
romance where trama of some sort becomes the means to bring two
characters together. Sometimes it's well-used, sometimes it's
very poorly used, but Special
isn't a romance. It's a coming-of-age story about fathers and
sons, a story of healing. Scott's trauma isn't a means to
anything; it IS the
story. And while yes, Jean's in it, and yes, Scott and Jean do
wind up together, that's just part of the larger healing process, and
Jean takes a backseat in this tale to Charles
Xavier -- who's the real secondary protagonist. Special is far more a story about
Scott and Xavier than Scott and Jean. But most of all, it's a
story about Scott.
The Scott of Special
emerged of a piece. Sometimes there’s not a clear linear
direction for how you reach a characterization. In retrospect, it
was a collection of
observations that suddenly GELLED. In the film, Marsden played
Cyclops
with a certain . . . cockiness, an edge of 'flip' that I’m not sure
even
he realizes. I once had the chance to ask him how he saw Cyclops,
what
his perceptions of the character were, and from his answer, it seemed
clear that he thinks of
Cyke as the boy-scout who toes the line, so I suspect that cockiness is
more Marsden leaking through than an intentional choice.
Nonetheless, it’s one of the more interesting aspects of the film
character, contributing complexity to what would otherwise be an
unbearably
2D tertiary character. Add to that the way Scott dressed in the
film --
a choice of the wardrobe department, I realize, but in the 'reality' of
the film world, it was curious. He was always covered up,
even when other characters weren’t and one might have expected him to
be hot
in all those clothes. It was as if he didn’t want to show his
body, and
the choice of staid clothing style was notable, as well (and in X2,
it’s even
worse). The way he moved combined ease and
discomfort, as if he
weren’t entirely sure of his body. He switched back and forth between a
fluidity that was almost sauntering, then a brittleness that
seemed doll-like. Again, I think this is more of Marsden the
person
leaking into a character with which he’s not yet entirely comfortable,
but as a writer, I could USE that -- and did. The whole package
is of
someone who wants to appear to be something he isn't . . . his
movements
and demeanor don’t quite match up. In Accidental
I took that in one direction, as the popular boy who grew into someone
else. But in Special, I used his comic background to
create something quite different.
Scott's
personality in the comics has all the hallmarks of an abused child, and
I wanted to explore that. Simplifying hugely, there are two basic
ways
for such kids to develop. One is to believe they really are 'bad'
and
become the 'problem' child (did you know that, in Florida at least, 98%
of inmates arrested for violent crimes were abused
children?).
But the other is to try to prove they're NOT bad by struggling to
become 'good enough.' There's a constant need to please, measure
up,
shoulder responsibility, tow the line . . . sound familiar? And
under it
all, a sense of insecurity. I’ve always been struck by the dual
nature
of Scott’s personality. There’s Cyclops, and then there’s Scott
Summers, and they’re rather different people. Cyclops is a
natural
leader, but Scott is very insecure. In the comics,
Scott's origin has varied from no time on the street to
being used by Jack Winters (Jack O'Diamonds) for cons and theft.
[Like
many of the older comic characters, after 40 years and multiple
writers, the canon is sometimes mutually contradictory.]
None of it was
as dark as what I gave him, but the comics did have to abide by the
comic
code. The closest background to Special was a mini
released in
the late '90s called "Children of the Atom," but even that could only
skirt reality, and it wasn't a particularly good series anyway.
Yet
there is this recurring theme that Scott’s foster years weren’t a
pretty picture, and combined with his comics personality, I thought it
all pointed to some real trauma.
For Scott's situation in Special,
I wanted to blend his time since the plane accident with a basically
healthy childhood from before. So while he may be deeply wounded,
the
core of his personality, formed in his earliest years, is stable.
This
is important, because it means he did learn both trust and
self-sufficiency at the right points in his developmental
process. If
those had been interrupted, then his healing process would have become much
more complex. I wanted to give him something inside to reach
for. For a more lengthy discussion of the use (and abuse) of
trauma in fiction, go HERE.
So that’s my basic thought process for the Scott of Special.
In addition to the themes of hope and recovery and rebirth, I’m also
playing with themes of 'actual' and 'apparent,' the self one is
versus the self others expect, and the tension between individual
personality and social class. None of the characters in Special
are quite what one would expect, even while they’re shaped by their
environments.
Special: the Genesis of Cyclops
provides the background-origin used for the characters in my post-X2
novel, Grail (just as An
Accidental Interception of Fate provided it for Climb the Wind and Heyoka, et al). So if you
liked Special and want to
know 'what happened next' (more or less), then I'd direct you to that
novel, which also -- somewhat ironically -- rescued me mentally from
the Big Pile of Fail that was X3. I suppose you can call it my
version of X3. For the curious, were Special to be rendered into print,
it would yield a novel of roughly 400 pages.
Acknowledgments:
A number of folks have helped me out during the writing of Special, each acknowledged in the
individual notes for each story. But here at the end, as always,
I'd like to thank Naomi for her patience at editing. I'd also
like to thank Heatherly, who read and commented on probably
2/3rds of these entries before they ever saw the light of day.
Although I do, myself, have a clinical background, and although I'd
read plenty of books on healing from sexual abuse (both before this and
in preparaing for writing this), my own area of clinical training and
experience is in bereavement counselling. Yet every area of
counselling develops its own unique quirks, insights, rhythms and
recognitions, so I turned to Heatherly for additional advice and
critique, since her area of study and clinical experience is in the field of sexual abuse
therapy. These stories would have been far less without her
generous assistance (including several emails and even a few telephone
conversations).