At this point, I guess I’ll mention that I always planned for Bocce to have an “automatic fight mode” as one of his defining traits. In Volume 1, I meant for it to come through in how efficiently he takes out the Jondhi patrol officer who shot Sky in the city-station scene, but I don’t think it ever really read that way.
It was a bit more obvious in his brutal battle with the two Kaagan-Vas mercenaries at the end of Volume 2.
Basically I thought of his fighting traits as something very Jason Bourne-like, but I actually came up with it many, many years before The Bourne Identity ever came out as a movie (I know the books had been around for much longer but I hadn’t been aware of them). Once again, it’s one of those things that I thought was interesting and novel at the time but in the intervening years has become much more commonplace in storytelling. But I do still like his convoluted origin story quite a bit, and I think it’s pretty unique, so I look forward to getting more into it.
Bocce came across to me as being very effective, I can’t say the ‘automatic fight mode’ was visible to me.
But not everything needs to have a visually clue. A nice conversation scene with personal reveals is a good way to progress the story.
Not just books, I’ll take the mini-series with Richard Chamberlain and Jaclyn Smith over any of the Matt Damon movies.
Just how much restraint do you think Cember had to use to NOT follow up the “I’m a pirate.” comment with a “It was only a matter of time until I needed an eye patch!” joke? LOL XD
Ack! Dammit! Now I wish I had thought of that line. Ha ha. Now I’ll have to work in a scene where he has to get a hook hand, just so I can use it.
The “automatic fight mode” stuff reminds me of a story — I think it was from a Wallace Wood anthology — about a guy with that kind of thing. Turns out that, while he is unaware of it, he has some sort of brain chip that just takes over for him, and eventually he finds out that he’s a memory-rewritten secret agent on an infiltration mission, so long story short the computer part of him makes him kill his love interest, betray his friends, impersonate his president and destroy his country’s weapon stockpiles. Hopefully Bocce has a different origin story!
Very cool story! Kinda reminds me of Total Recall and how Arnold Schwarzenegger was basically a bad guy who had a memory rewrite to make him think he was a good guy so he could infiltrate a rebel group. I always thought that was a really cool angle on the character.
the auto fight gig is cool!!! great stuff!!!