Spoiler warnings for: Fortuna Saga and Hymns of the Apostate, 22 Jump Street, Mass Effect, Star Wars
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Sequels and prequels are odd beasts to tackle as a writer.
Normally, a sequel will fall into one of these categories:
– It escalates the stakes of the original story (“Bigger, better, bolder, and louder.” The Fast and the Furious model)
– It is a different story told in the same world (e.g. the Godfather II or the Mandalorian)
– It is the next part of an ongoing story (Lord of the Rings into the Two Towers)
The Fortuna Saga and its sequel, Hymns of the Apostate, are complete stories and can be enjoyed in isolation. On the other hand, both stories reflect on common themes, questions, and motifs that can provide a deeper understanding of each story. This is most obvious where the stories clearly parallel each other (e.g. Valens and the Hunter vs. The Last Dragon and Ezra) where the same question is viewed through a different schema. Sequels are the most interesting when they iterate, explore, and stress-test their own thematic structures. Doing so risks breaking apart a carefully-worded statement in the original story, but I believe that examining the weak-points or exceptions to these statements, while painful, is not destructive if done thoughtfully.
One of my favorite sequels of the previous decade, 22 Jump Street, uses this entire thought-process as the premise for the entire movie. If you haven’t seen this movie (and the “original” remake), I really encourage you to do so. Sequels often falter because they try to recapture the magic or the “formula” of the original. The script of 22 Jump Street delights in this fact. The characters are literally told to “do the exact same thing as last time.” Whenever the characters in try to deviate from the formula set by the original film, they are berated by their superiors and forced to comply with that formula. This causes the protagonists to focus on the wrong clues and make poor interpretations on what they are seeing because they are using an old lens to focus on a new environment. While the movie ultimately still relies on the established formula, it was refreshing to see the awareness of it.
For comparison, let’s turn to Mass Effect 3 (a sequel to one of my favorite games). Let’s ignore the much maligned ending for now because it’s not relevant for the conversation. Mass Effect 3 makes the same storytelling mistakes that 22 Jump Street lampoons. More importantly, it mirrors the mistakes that the George Lucas’ Star Wars prequels (Episodes I-III) make. Mass Effect 3 goes out of its way to reintroduce basically every single character that we have met so far throughout the tale. You see characters for brief scenes where they usually end up getting killed. These scenes do very little to move the plot forward and, honestly, don’t have much to say. These interactions feel more like a To-Do checklist item rather than a genuine story moment. As a player, it feels like the game leans forward through the 4th Wall for a moment to whisper, “Hey, do you remember Kasumi? Well, here’s a 10 second interaction with here…. OK! Next up is Jack.” The Star Wars prequels make this same mistake where the audience sees explanations for simple thing that do not need explaining. The audience didn’t need to know where C3P0 came from nor did they need to know the troubling origins of Anakin Skywalker’s birth… especially when these facts have almost no bearing on the stories that were ultimately told. If these facts were left unsaid, it would not change the story of the prequels or enhance our understanding of the original versions. Usually, this new information rips open gaping plot holes and weaken the original story.
The existence of a character doesn’t need explanation. The potential origin story is not what endeared the audience to them in the first place. These little bits of fan-service nods and expansions are fun to do as a writer, but they actually make these literal galaxy-sized stages feel smaller. In a universe of near infinite possibilities in Star Wars and Mass Effect, we get smaller, weaker, less-wise versions of characters that we already know. Anakin Skywalker is less interesting than Darth Vader. Anakin is less capable, less competent, less confident, and has less storytelling potential because we know that, no matter what, he has to end up as Darth Vader. All of this is true because of how Anakin was framed in the story.
This is a huge risk when writing a prequel. Balen Frey in Lost Noise, for example, has “plot armor.” He is essential to the plot of Fortuna Saga. I can’t kill Balen during the run of Lost Noise if I want the plot of Fortuna Saga to remain logically consistent… and the audience knows this (Although, if I can figure out how to have an internally consistent Scanners-like scene where I spray Balen’s brains over the page, rest assured that I will do it) We know how Balen’s story ends already, so how do we make the journey interesting for him?
This is something that I want to explore with Lost Noise for the characters with plot armor. It may work or it might be a spectacular failure, but I think there is another option to keep characters interesting in sequels and prequels. A monologue from As You Like It articulates this point better than I ever could:
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
This is an interesting way to view a character. To personalize this thought, I simply am not the same person that I was ten years ago. I might have similar traits, experiences, and preferences, but I would handle the exact same scenarios from my past much differently if I were somehow thrust into them today. Instead of viewing Fortuna Saga’s Balen Frey as the necessary endpoint for the Lost Noise Balen Frey character arc, I intend on viewing this story’s Balen Frey as a unique individual worthy of exploration in his own right. He is one of the many parts that we play. Even if the flesh cannot die, much can happen to this role that Balen is currently playing.