31 Plays in 31 Days, #3 - “Sides”

Haha, I was a clever boots and figured out a way to get around my own rules! I mentioned recently how my writing slowed down as it often does when I go into production for something. I have some fan fics that I was going along at a very good clip on for several months that I want to make sure I finish, but that is ill-suited for this challenge because it’s designed for drama, not prose. I could change the parameters, but it will either make a lot more work or make it a lot less interesting to post, because it takes more words to make a presentable, readable piece of prose.

But! It occurred to me if I have a dialogue scene in the story, I can draft it as if it were a play. It will need editing, and expansion in the form of narration on the action. But all these 31P31D need fixing up to one level or another, and it’s still useable work that can count for both purposes! Behold as I have circumvented my own arbitrary and largely pointless rules! CALL ME LOKI ‘CAUSE THE TRICKSTER GOD AIN’T GOT NOTHING ON ME.

So this is from “The Favor”, one of the shorter, theoretically quicker to make Marvel pieces I started based on the sudden striking of an idea. It fits into the larger series I’ve been working on, one that follows Steve Rogers’s journey that leads him to going back to the 1940’s and retirement from being a superhero. This piece is from much, much later in his life, after Peggy died, and focuses on Tony Stark’s point of view, who doesn’t know the whole story. So it’s told as if Tony has an old family friend, Peggy’s widower who he knows as Uncle Grant, reach out to him for a favor, asking him to build something that he can’t ask for from anybody else. The story runs on a particular dramatic irony, that the audience knows something about Grant that Tony doesn’t. I enjoyed writing that little disconnect.

This takes place about a year after the events of Captain America: Civil War. Grant’s been dealing with the loss of his wife of sixty years, and Tony’s struggling with feelings of guilt and uncertainty over his role in the conflict with Steve. He doesn’t exactly doubt his own position, but he feels lousy being the guy having to lead the charge against Captain America as a war criminal, particularly because the man’s respect and good opinion had come to mean a lot to him, and because his dad cared about him so much. He’s carrying that around and is kind of craving some sort of absolution from somebody he looks up to. That underlies much of this scene.


I think my Granddad owned this exact jacket, if not this entire outfit.

( Day #3 - Sides )