Hello all you happy people! Josh Stoodley here with another blog post and some exciting news. This week we’re going to talk about reboots and retcons in an evolving and expanding series and why they’re sometimes necessary. We’re also going to have a little dig at my ego, because that’s both fun and necessary! Specifically, we’re going to talk about the reboot and rebranding of The Standard Tech Case Files that will be coming with the release of No Blood for Business in November.

Yes, that’s right folks! After six years of lollygagging (some of which is Covid’s fault, a lot isn’t), No Blood for Business will be coming out in November. Preview chapters will be posted on my Patreon site in the run up to release. Think of it like Early Access for No Blood for Business.

I’m sure you’re curious about what No Blood for Business will reboot. Well, rest assured, all your favourite characters are still there. Resident knight in sour business suit Joey Bianco, their squire and berserk optimist Jen Ryan are still the stars of the show, seeking out all sorts of criminals in the twisted warrens of Fort City.

However, the setting has changed considerably. Today, we’re going to outline the basics of the problems I ran into while creating the world of Fort City and why I think they need to change. Next week, we will delve deeper into these problems, why they’re ubiquitous in vampire fiction and why some of them need to end, starting with the Masquerade. A vital piece of vampire fiction, going all the way back to Dracula. And yet the conceit that gave me the most trouble by far in creating my own take on vampires. Also, during this process, I want to analyze Baldur’s Gate III and it’s (lack of) impact on the wider video game industry.

With me so far? All right then. Let’s start from the top. But before we go on, remember that if you like this content and want to see more, you should support me on Patreon or buy me a hot chocolate.

The Masquerade or Ancient Conspiracies Make No Damn Sense So Can We Stop Using Them Please?

I wanted to start with the problem of the Masquerade, because it informs so much of the other flaws in my world-building but also in the world-building of virtually every bit of vampire fiction ever.

Here’s the thing: most vampire fiction runs on the idea that vampires are a secret society of immortals hidden away from humanity while doing vampire-y things. A lot of vampire fiction also has vampires running a conspiracy to control humanity, but this isn’t true of all vampire fiction. We call this hidden society and conspiracy the Masquerade, after Vampire: The Masquerade (1991), but the concept predates the game, with the term first being coined by Robert A Heinlein in 1958’s Methuselah’s Children. There are even older examples: Superman in 1938, the Scarlet Pimpernel, Zorro, the Shadow, etc.

So if the Masquerade is such an old, well-established literary trope, why is it a problem? Well, when it comes to small-scale uses, like a superhero’s secret identity or all the shenanigans spies and undercover cops get up too, it probably isn’t a problem. After all, the rule of secrets is that they can be kept by two people if one of them is dead. The fewer people in on a secret, or the fewer people that secret affects, the less likely it’s going to get blown, right?

Sure. The problem is when you scale that up to a whole species, especially a species that interacts regularly with humans. Extra especially when you consider most of those interactions consist of either eating humans or sleeping with them. Look, I think my species is rock stupid and the reason aliens don’t want to talk to us is because we are the intergalactic equivalent of cave trolls, but c’mon. We notice when something out there is preying on us. We do! We don’t always handle it in the right way, but we’re not comatose vegetables. We notice.

And we have so many ways to notice. Any halfway decent medical examiner will notice a consistent pattern of exsanguinated victims. Police are useless, sure, but even they will notice people missing from their regular beat. Activists are constantly hunting down rich and powerful figures to expose their crimes. Closed circuit television. News cameras. So on and so forth. And no, you can’t just bribe/mind control/kill all those poking around. Many a criminal conspiracy has tried that (the bribing and the killing, anyway) and they still got caught because bribing and killing and mind controlling that many people is still going to attract attention.

So the Masquerade is bogus. What does this have to do with Standard Tech? Well, it matters because I could literally not figure out away for my vampires to hide in their own, secret society. So they had to become a part of the regular human society, and I’d decided to set my stories in the United States of America.

Which brings me to the next point…

Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution: Or, No, You Can’t Have A Medieval Style Government In The U.S.

Woops.

So Article IV, Section 4 of the American Constitution is the Guarantee Clause: every state will have a republican (small r) government. No ifs ands or buts. There’s a couple additional laws on top of that (namely, the Foreign Emoluments Clause, which says the American Government cannot give out titles of nobility) but that’s the big one and the one that matters here.

Why? Because most vampire governments in fiction (including mine at first) use the VTM model: a quasi-feudalistic form of government. It makes sense narratively (vampires are old, crotchety and probably not that keen on this newfangled democracy thing) and it works just fine if we assume our bloodsuckers are running their own secret society behind the scenes. It also allows for us some handfisted mobster parallels, something I was also guilt of in earlier versions of my writings.

The problem is, not only is the semi-feudal government an overdone cliché, it literally cannot happen in work where vampires are out and a more-or-less integrated part of American society. American law literally prevents anybody from claiming a noble title if they’re an American citizen, which is a damn big impediment to some vampire calling themselves ‘Baron’ and ruling some chunk of America!

There are other problems with the semi-feudal arrangement, like issues of succession, the fact that feudalism didn’t exist, that I will get into more in the coming weeks. But the fact remains that the vampire society I made up in The Black Coats can’t exist within the rules I gave. I must either change the rules or change the society. I found it easier to change the society going forward, though I may regret that decision when it comes to re-writing my previous work.

Note that this isn’t about realism. Realism is bullshit, okay? Realism is just a way of saying ‘this is what I like in my fiction’ (cf. all the ASOIAF fans who try defending their terrible series). What this is about is maintaining an internally consistent, believable universe. Which is more important than making your universe realistic anyway. In order to maintain an internally consistent, believable universe you need to establish rules and follow them. My vampire society broke those rules and became an inconsistent mess as a result.

Not that that was the only problem with my world-building…

A Corporation Running A City? What Was I Thinking?

            Standard Technologies, Inc. is something of an artifact. It dates back to the time when I was imagining the series as more of a corporate thriller than the film noir-ish government procedural/police procedural it has become.

Now, Standard Tech is still going to a big part of my world, as I think it’s a good idea and answers a lot of how Fort City is still standing. But the problems came when I tried to keep Standard Tech as my heroes organization even as I was changing them to be a part of the American governmental system.

Look, corporations have way too much power in American politics. That’s not a controversial statement. But they don’t control entire cities (anymore; look up ‘company towns’ for an idea of how bad an idea that was)! Nor could they in this day and age; the average city, never mind something like New York, has grown to the point where the minimum size of the bureaucracy needed is too large for a profit-oriented company to field sustainably.

It was also a bad fit for my heroes morally. While noir heroes are morally ambiguous and both Jen and Joey have rather nasty flaws of their own, company towns are pure evil. Plus, noir heroes are anti-corporate anyway. I was stretching things as it was by making my heroes part of the government, corporations are right out.

Let’s Jump To Some Conclusions!

As I’ve hopefully demonstrated, the current state of the Standard Tech Case Files is a mess. Its world-building is inconsistent and nonsensical. And that has a knock down affect on the quality of the rest of the story. The Standard Tech Case Files is, at its heart, urban fantasy and fantasy lives and dies on its world-building. If you don’t believe me, look at the Sequel Trilogy for Star Wars and how badly it violates its own rules. Or the final seasons of Game of Thrones. World-building matters, even if its not something the readers or critics pay much attention too.

Once upon a time, I swore that I wasn’t going to be like George Lucas or Marvel or DC: there was never going to be any early-installment weirdness or retcons in my work, no sir! I cannot believe how arrogant I was. As series evolves and grows, there will naturally be continuity errors, revisions and yes, straight up retcons. To believe otherwise is madness.

And here it must be said, I went down the wrong path with the Case Files. I made a poorly constructed world that made no sense, and now I have to go fix that.

See you in the Fort, pups.