Cannon Fodder
The only reason you're here is to move the plot along.
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A Job’s No Job
Earlier this year, each SubStick would begin with a running gag about an unemployment streak. I quit my last job after it failed to provide an improved schedule or pay rate. In that sense, I may sound entitled.
…
Last time I brought up the number, it was at six weeks. I didn’t intend for it to last that long, nor did I intend for that number to quadruple. I am slowly transforming into a NEET, but it’s not by choice, I swear.
I have been trying for months now, cycling through a constantly growing list of sites and companies to monitor, adjusting keywords every week. The harshness of the modern job market has been talked about before, but I didn’t realize it until I was immersed in it myself. It’s like swiping on a dating app except you aren’t even getting interviewed by pretty girls. Ghosting is constant: several interviews verbally promise to send you updates only to go completely silent. Everyone is fighting.
My previous job lasted for more than three years. I acquired it through subtle nepotism, and had been applying for months beforehand to no avail. Even if I wanted to prove my merit, it was my parents who still had to get me through the door.
Even credentialism isn’t working out for many people. 58% of students who graduated in the last year are still looking for their first job. Maybe college is overrated, or certain degrees are useless, okay. Are CS or engineering people doing any better? If it’s true that 82% of new tech jobs went to foreigners, that paints a broad picture. Microsoft recently laid off thousands of people only to request a bunch of H-1Bs the next day. Is it that much worse to get useless American degree holders than hundreds of thousands of H-1Bs? Are we all really that unqualified?
I could probably get a job easily, one that doesn’t pay as good or use any of my experience. That doesn’t make it not demeaning to spend years in a professional environment and come out on the same tier as a high schooler. It’s humiliating: what was this all for? Why shouldn’t someone opt out of that kind of life in favor of one with personal freedom and frivolous enjoyments like video games?
I’ll write my movies in the meantime.
Outwriting The Professionals
I am an amateur, writing as a hobby only because I do not get paid. Due to this status, I do not like to compare my work to actual Hollywood movies. It feels almost maniacally arrogant to put scripts I wrote by myself on the same shelf as million-dollar productions with hundreds if not thousands of people behind them. However…
Do you remember Civil War? Written and directed by Alex Garland, the 2024 movie depicts a hypothetical second civil war within the United States, between the federal government and various secessionist movements, as a group of journalists journey to interview the president before Washington DC is taken by rebels. It caused quite a stir online for its political subtext. As for my own opinion, it’s, as the kids say, “mid.” While it was admirable to try a purposefully nonsensical civil war scenario, it was at odds with its characters and its set pieces were unmemorable, except for one scene, which I constantly think about because I wrote something just like it.
A few months before Civil War’s release, I wrote a script I’m going to call Project Seekers, which I’ve mentioned before. The two hardly resemble each other, one being a dystopian action movie and the other a science fiction horror. Despite this, they have one particular plot point in common, one that I unironically think I did better, and I’m going to explain why.
Halfway through Civil War, our journalist troupe is on their way to DC when they come across a small uniformed militia burying bodies in a mass grave. The militia, led by Jesse Plemons wearing an iconic pair of red sunglasses, holds them at gunpoint, shooting one immediately. The journalists say they are Americans, Plemons asks them, “What kind of American are you?” While a few of them answer with their home states, earning his approval, one says he’s from Hong Kong and is executed.
It’s an alright scene, with good performances and sound design, but it doesn’t function super well dramatically. In it, you have six journalist characters. Two of them are killed, and one is wounded. However, the two that die are not major characters. They have just been introduced less than ten minutes ago. Our main group happens to encounter them while driving. This means that, when things get tense, the audience already has an inkling as to who is going to die and who isn’t. Garland introduces two new characters for the sole purpose of making the scene more suspenseful and violent without having to kill off too much of his main cast.
This isn’t a dumb idea. Most people who saw and enjoyed the movie had no issue with it. It makes sense: you need somebody to die to show the stakes and you can’t let it be one of your main characters just yet. The guy with the gun needed to shoot someone to demonstrate the threat he posed. “Red shirts” are a trope for a reason. Horror movies do this too: they introduce a small side character just so the main monster or ghost or whatever has a body to maim. You need to make an example. But when it’s very obvious those examples are all your monster is going to kill, it feels a bit cheap.
The reason I thought of this strategy while watching the movie was that I used it when I wrote Project Seekers in November 2023. I won’t flaunt the script too much because it has several structural problems identified by hindsight and actual critical readers. This particular piece of it, though, was not something any of them, nor I now, have an issue with.
First, a summary. Project Seekers is about a young man experiencing apocalyptic dreams that appear to be visions of the future. During these dreams, he is separated from his family and has to travel to get back to them. On the way, he encounters two lone children who are also heading to relatives in the same direction, so they decide to stick together. After a while, consistent with the disturbing nature of the nightmares, both of the children die. I’ll refrain from explaining how it happens.
On a surface level, I do the same thing as Civil War. I introduce two characters for the sole purpose of killing them to add shock value and urgency to the situation. However, due to the circumstances of my own story, there were two differences in how this strategy was employed.
1. The victims do not die immediately.
In Civil War, these two random journalists pop up and die within about ten minutes, and since the story is still focused on our main characters, we learn almost nothing about these new people and have no time to familiarize ourselves with them before they are shot. Is it part of the point? Probably, but it means the only thing their deaths have to offer is shock.
My child characters don’t stick around for very long either, but I dedicate at least a few scenes to show off their personalities, let them sit down for a bit, interact with our protagonist, and demonstrate their thematic purpose. Yes, there is a reason I put kids in this situation that isn’t just being dark and edgy. Without being too explanatory, Project Seekers is about corruption, and much of it explores how young people are affected by depictions of violence and how it shapes their perception of reality.
The kids are in the script for about twenty pages, twice that of the doomed journalists, and have an established presence even when they’re not in the scene. Because of the nature of the world surrounding them, the moment they are introduced, the audience becomes subconsciously aware of the likelihood that they are not going to make it. That means they spend the next twenty minutes slowly dreading the moment when it happens. But why would it have such a large effect?
2. The victims are innocent and sympathetic.
People don’t like seeing innocents be harmed. It’s why they all freak out when a dog ends up in peril, or why every superhero movie says cities are somehow evacuated before their big action climax. The tension comes from the established knowledge, the sinking feeling that no one is safe. In many slashers, it is often abundantly clear who is about to die, but scenes can still have suspense because the knowledge that something is about to happen actually locks the viewer in. Most of what makes a jumpscare so effective isn’t the scare itself, but the buildup to it. The terror is in not knowing when.
So, when the time comes for a child to be harmed, the audience is also paranoid about what they’ll see. How much will be shown, and how bad will it get? Shock is a temporary emotion; dread and disturbance last longer. It calls to memory their own nightmares, and just as it lingers with them, it lingers with our protagonist after it happens. These deaths are the midpoint; they change him.
Civil War’s dead journalists, meanwhile, are introduced gleefully joyriding and jumping across cars. Once they die, there’s no lasting effect. It’s a symptom of a bigger problem: the characters are not very sympathetic.
It’s not like they serve no purpose: a large part of the movie is the casual apathy and disengagement that applies to both sides of the conflict. Our heroes celebrate pictures of horrific bombings, are aroused by the sound of distant gunfire, and remark that they’ll photograph each other’s deaths. Anyone saying the movie is a “love letter to journalists” is a liar. I’m not horrified by the “what kind of American are you” scene, but I should’ve been.
Alex Garland has been quite busy, co-directing this year’s Warfare with Civil War’s military supervisor Ray Mendoza. He wrote Danny Boyle’s 28 Years Later as well as its upcoming sequels. He’s also done video games; there’s an easy-to-find draft of a Halo movie he wrote twenty years ago. I say this because his next project is Elden Ring.
I don’t think I’m a better writer than he, truthfully. He’s been in the business a long time and many factors go into production that might cause a scene to have less impact than intended. He doesn’t need to listen to my advice. So, instead, you should.
“That's where you're wrong, kiddo. I do have power. The power of the U.S. Government.”
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