Tue 9 Sep, 2008
It’s always a bit dangerous for an author to describe something as his or her “favorite.” Readers can then dive into that bit and wonder why it’s so important to the author, dissecting it and otherwise obsessing over it.
In many cases, this favoritism has less to do with the content itself, and more with the author’s feelings. For a piece of the author’s own writing, the author may just have had a particularly easy time writing that section. Or the author may be proud of a particular word or phrase that’s important to the author, but not to the story.
That said, chapter 4 of Armor is probably my favorite chapter. This is where everything starts to come together. Much of the groundwork for the ending is laid here.
Moreover, this chapter includes several important conversations, my “Gundam conversations.”
Gundam was one of my major influences in creating Giant Armors, and one staple of Gundam series involves conversations between characters about why they fight. Most Gundam protagonists don’t really want to fight in whatever war they’re in, but they’re often surrounded by people who do. So they end up in a lot of conversations about why they’re fighting.
So I wanted to include that in Armor. In this chapter, Tom talks to several folks about why he chose to stay and fight, which I think is an important thing to establish.
This also establishes a running theme of the entire Giant Armors series: the differences between kids from Earth and the inhabitants of the Giant Armors world. The people in that world have a completely different pre-history, history, culture, etc. than anyone on Earth. Not only do they have different cultures, they see the world differently. They organize themselves differently, socialize differently, talk differently, build differently. They are, effectively, aliens.
So, a lot happens in this chapter. Perhaps that’s why it’s my favorite.
