I know, I know, I promised “daily” excerpts and updates for this blog, and the last time I made a post or posted an excerpt was November 3, four days ago. My pizza delivery job has been particularly stifling this week, and I just haven’t been able to get a satisfactory excerpt written, or come up with any insight to it. Fortunately, now I have, but I may have overachieved a little; my word count went from 6,058 to 11,367 since I last checked in, so I hope you’ve got some time on your hands.
When we last left our heroes, Cindy was just about to place a magnifying lens on her heart. At the outset of this excerpt, she does, setting her plot into motion. Malcolm also talks Phineas into coming with him to a boxing match in Blackstone. This sets a date with destiny.
After dinner, Cindy leaves her house in the North Heights and wanders across The Narrows to Blackstone, where she’s never been. She initially saw it out her bedroom window as a “shadow land against the end of the world”, which intrigued her on a more meaningful level than she just wanted to go “slumming”. Much of the excerpt describes the changing setting as she goes to Blackstone.
Once she’s there, she’s happened upon by Dirk, who had just recently been finally absorbed by the Draconi mafia, if you recall. At the moment, that seems kind of irrelevant, but it’ll be a big deal later. Seeing a vulnerable young society girl lost in his neighbourhood, his heart tells him exactly what he should do: exploit her for all she’s got.
At this point, this reminds me of the scene in Disney’s “Aladdin” where, after Princess Jasmine runs away, she gets on the bad side of a merchant who, in Arabian law, gets to cut off her hand. Aladdin whisks in to talk the merchant out of rage, and now two characters in the story are acquainted.
Though unlike Aladdin, who fabricates a story about how Jasmine is mad and didn’t know what she was doing, Phineas doesn’t feel like he has to make up anything. He pretty much makes like she was with him the whole time, and in a display of quick wit, Cindy goes along with it, even if at this point, Phineas and Cindy don’t know each other. The stranger that’s offering to help is a better bet than the one that wants to bleed you for $170 just to walk you home.
Dirk tries to dissuade Phineas from taking her away, but Phineas deflates him by defining how fundamentally absurd his offer is. Dirk, who would usually be a cunning adversary, is flabbergasted and makes an ass of himself. There’s a particular reason for this that we’ll get into later; some of the more sharp of you might already know what it is.
I had planned this encounter in the outline stage, because I thought it would be better for Phineas and Cindy to meet like this rather than have a silly “meet cute”, where they bump awkwardly into each other and are at first nervous before they find each other; comic fluff. This encounter certainly has more meat to it; it helps define Phineas as clever, Dirk as conniving, and Cindy as stronger than she looks, with a little help. Though I eventually want to define Dirk as not a fundamentally bad person, particularly as the story goes on, where Draconi has him spy on Phineas.
The excerpt ends with the opening of the next chapter, which starts with the boxing match between “Brickfist” Bricklin and “Massive” Malcolm Mulligan; also a place where Cindy didn’t think she would have found herself, but it all helps to her growth as a character.
In the next chapter, though, I face a challenge; I have to define Malcolm as a very intelligent character, which will offset against his huge, brutish appearance and thick accent. The pieces will probably fall into place when I actually get there, but still, it’s something to think about.
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