Enter The Dragon. Thing. Again.

[bloodyrosemccoy]

Another Look Unlimited Day
Be Late for Something Day
Play Days (09/05-09/09)
Birthday - Jesse James (outlaw)
Birthday - Dweezil Zappa (musician)

 

Oh, lord.

 

The Dragonturtle is back.

 

I hadn’t realized it at first. I was blithely writing along, doing the peculiar science fiction world-building process which I call ‘barfing aliens’—that is, having a ton of ideas for different characters and species and scribbling them all down rapidly so I don’t forget and only later working out the jumble—when suddenly, in the midst of squiddly color-changers and floating bugs and blind pink tribble-like things, there appeared in my head a great big fangly monstrous reptile with a big iridescent shell, sort of like if you crossed Smaug the Dragon with Bowser, King of the Koopas.

 

With a stethoscope around his neck.

 

He grinned expansively, reared back onto his hind limbs, and spread his forelimbs wide.

 

“I’m BAAAACK!” he said.

 

I stared at him. “You want to be a doctor?”

 

“Sure,” he said, twirling the stethoscope through his enormous claws. “If that bunch of monkeys you’ve got can do it, I sure as hell could!”

 

It shouldn’t have occurred to me. This character is not the most obvious choice for my Doctors In SPACE! stories, except maybe as a cause of death. He used to be a villain in the stories I wrote a million years ago as a young ’un, and in them he was a big ugly beady-eyed juggernaut who terrorized the world with his sorcery and his scheming and his enormous claws. He spent his life roaring and rampaging against my intrepid heroes with all the force of a big cartoonily obvious Bad Guy.

 

And he was my absolute favorite character to write. Ever.

 

He just had way too much fun doing the things he did. He in fact genuinely liked several of the heroes and considered them his friends,* and his wars with them were his idea of a friendly game of basketball in the park. He didn’t seem like the type who would make a good surgeon, but when I told him we could give it a shot and stuck him in The Hospital, to my great surprise, it worked very well. He seemed to have gotten over committing anything except the occasional atrocity, and he puts all his energy into intimidation now. And his personality was as wonderfully funny as ever. He does have an appalling bedside manner, but the other doctors assure me that they’re doing everything they can to convince him to stop threatening to eat his patients.

 

So, he gets to be a doctor, and I get to steal an idea from myself.

 

It’s actually a relief to have it that way. The Giant Idea Eggbeater is going as strong as ever, and most of it has to do with other people’s ideas. Sometimes it surprises me what surfaces in my stories, and who I cast as which character. I have one alien doctor who, despite being a large swamp-dwelling six-eyed amphibian, seems to be channelling Major Charles Emerson Winchester, III from M*A*S*H.** A few weeks ago when watching Anastasia again I realized that another of my characters, an old sorcerer, seemed to have appropriated the voice of Vlad. Annie Lennox has made an appearance as an alien before—two different aliens, in fact (because Annie is too awesome to stay one person).*** I think Penn & Teller have made a cameo.

 

I know that writers use ideas from outside sources, but I think it would embarrrass us all to explore just how much of what we have written stems from someone else’s writing. It’s something of a relief when the person you’re borrowing from is yourself, because you know you’re not going to raise a ruckus about it.

 

Sometimes, you might even be pleasantly surprised at the results. I sure was. Welcome to The Hospital, Dragonturtle.

 

 

*Although they might have argued that point.

 

**I realized this when he was talking to another character, a Dr. Harcourt, and he snapped “Shut up, Haahcouht!”

 

***Holy shite, I just realized that I have set a new record by mentioning three people in a row who fall into my category of “People Whose Voices Are The Sex”: David Ogden Stiers, Kelsey Grammer, and Annie Lennox. Obviously I have something for voices.

EDIT: Sorry.  Forgot to cut it.