You know that maxim that everyone thinks they're the main character in their movie? It's absurd, right? That we do that?
Like, by all measures of what makes a good movie, the vastest majority of us don't live lives worth filming, right? And worse than that, by any measure, we aren't the main character of the story we're in. We make too few decisions, engage with our conflicts too rarely, we learn and take to our lessons too rarely.
It's funny. Everyone I've ever listened to or read talk about the things you have to do in a story, they all talk about arcs. Character arcs and resolution, right? They're hugely important! ...To story. Everyone who talks about it always makes the distinction between story – not even necessarily fiction, but narrative – and real life. In real life, we don't have neat, tidy little arcs to our character, do we? That's why we consume stories. They'll tell you.
It can take years for lessons we learn to take. Think of words of wisdom your parents said to you as a child that you didn't understand until you yourself were an adult and a parent, for instance. See, that arc makes for a nice story, right? As you were thinking it, you were likely – if you're anything like me – framing it in narrative terms, so you could distill the lesson there is to learn from the period of time it took you to learn it.
That's alchemy. You know that, right? Whenever you tell a story, you are participating in a magical tradition that is as old as the species Homo Sapiens. That alchemy of ideas is maybe what makes us Us.
You know what else is alchemy? Whiskey!
As I have studied storytelling for this pursuit – because, believe me, I had given up on ever being anything other than a pretty good server and decent bartender long before Rob first popped in my head – I have come to the conclusion that Rob is many things. None of those is a good storyteller.
A good storyteller would have had this thing wrapped up a long time ago.
But maybe that's actually my fault.
Our first draft was fewer than 15,000 words long. Little more than a short novella. And I was like, “Alright, Rob, let's do this again, and this time let's make it novel-length. So think ten-times what you just did.”
It's become something significantly more than novel-length. Obviously.
And maybe it is my fault. Maybe it's my influences – people who can't not run long like Dan Carlin of Common Sense and Hardcore History or Forrest Burgess and Scott Philbrook of Astonishing Legends fame. Maybe good enough, deep enough, to get the story told isn't good enough. And it's never deep enough, right ladies? (Why did I make that joke?) I know it never is when I'm curious about something. A five or ten or fifteen minute synopsis, no matter how detailed, never cuts it for me. I like context. I like tangents. I like to see how interested people see a thing, and how they contextualize it in their worldviews.
Because—
And I know I say it a lot. I've said it too many times in this piece, but what sets us apart from the “animals” could very well be our ability to share with others of our kind – and potentially others of other kinds – our worldviews. That is, literally put our thoughts in their heads – either verbally or otherwise.
I have made the “artistic” decision to let these Producer posts remain largely stream of consciousness – because that's what you're getting with Rob, isn't it? Basically? But even more loosely, I think, than I "structure" Rob. Whatever that means. I think of the people who were given the corpus of Cicero's writings and told to organize it into publishable manuscripts.
I imagine their flap-jawed dismay.
Maybe I want— You know, I should maybe talk about what that means. Why should I want anything for Rob's manuscript. It's a good question.
Maybe I want to demonstrate how arcs can take time by walking you through several long-term arcs at once. Or maybe I'm just insane from social isolation and this is how I'm spending time I feel guilty for having. Who really knows?
Whatever. I'm better at this than painting or making music. So this is where I'm starting.
So, to get back to the original topic and the obsessive thought which brought me here today, what do you do with a POV character who isn't the main character in the story?
If we're all the main characters in our stories, how do we tell our POV in someone else's story?
Yahtzee Croshaw seems to be tackling that very idea in his whatever he calls it, Dev Journal. With his new game he seems to be running with the concept that the player character is an NPC in other characters' games. I'm not entirely sure, I haven't tuned in for a while before this week – and then not for the whole thing. Which I already know is because the lessons to be learned there aren't relevant enough to the problems I'm trying to tackle in the text right now – but to which I will inevitably return, possibly in years, when I am at the stage of my work he foreshadows.
Writing teachers will tell you that if your character is an observer, they are not the POV character. They cannot be the main character.
What does that say about me?
For the last 30-plus years I've been an observer of other humans. In part because of circumstances, but also because of my own skill sets and preferences. Does that mean that everything that has happened in my life is a bad story? Or does it mean that it's not worthy of a novel or a movie or really even a short-run TV show?
I mean, I know I'm no John Mulaney, but damn. My life could make at least as good a sitcom as his was.
Actually, probably not.
I couldn't get Martin Short.
It comes back to Why Me, doesn't it? Insecurity, man. That's what it does to you. But what is insecurity?
I think about that a lot.
Like while I was watching Lindsay Ellis's most recent, Loki, the MCU, and Narcissism – look, I unashamedly love video essays, care if you want, I don't, whatever the case.
Isn't answering that question in the affirmative Narcissism? Egoism? Isn't ego death the first step toward enlightenment?
It boils down to the same thing I was pondering and probably left, forgotten, unresolved, about humility. Is humility the opposite of narcissim? Or are they somehow adjacent in a radial-type system of values and their opposites?
Just because I think about a topic a lot doesn't mean I have answers.
I have many thoughts. Few answers.
But that, right there. I do think I have some answers. Or at least ideas which might nudge us toward them.
Is my Why Me the same as the Historian or the Litigator who obscures evidence to uphold their worldview? Because I think therefor I am right? I don't know. I don't fully understand narcissism.
So maybe let's talk about that a little.
My parents are classic “Narcissistic Parents” a la Reddit. But do they have Narcissistic Personality Disorder? I don't think so. Well, I say that because neither of them is a part of my life. You hear a lot of talk about going No Contact on the internet. You hear a lot of people pay it a lot of lip service in person, too, when they find out that you have an unhealthy relationship with your family. A lot of people talk big and never act.
That doesn't make me better than you. It just means I'm willing to cut off a limb to stop myself bleeding to death.
Is Vader's a better life than Obi's?
Who knows. They're both tragic.
How am I going to segue to a point?
I'm probably on that narcissist scale. But I am also probably somewhere on the Autism Spectrum. What do they call it? Neuro-atypical? Whatever the opposite of Neurotypical is. Specifically, I take things too literally. For the most part, I do it consciously – perhaps I should add the adjoiner now; because maybe it's a learned trait. Even the autistic can adapt. But (again) specifically, I take advice very seriously. Following it verbatim.
Now, that is also a result of being beaten up by a former-Army Heavy if I didn't. But it's also a thing I've found myself in internal conflict over, when two counsels, as it were, contradicted one another.
So I am probably like a hypochondriac of psychological disorders. I mean, I watched PTSD and schizophrenia wreak havoc on my parents' lives – who wouldn't be terrified they have everything in the DSM-5?
Why Me? Right?
If anything, I learned for a while to normalize. To be able to at least pretend to fit in. Moving from North Carolina back to Ohio was... culture shock? I don't know. I stopped being able to fit in. Maybe it was me. Very likely it was me. But if anything changed, it was my degree of effort to integrate into the society as myself rather than as someone else. I learned very quickly that that V isn't welcome pretty much anywhere. Which is difficult to swallow, and sits in your stomach, in my case, for years now. What do you do with that?
If you aren't welcome in the proximity you find yourself....
I found myself in a debate on Twitter yesterday involving District 9 – that ET movie from years ago. As I am thinking of my situation in Columbus, these last five years, I wonder whether the people who were insisting the allegory of that movie was only to actual refugee/apartheid situations in the world.
What if the Prawns are a metaphor for an alien state of mind? An alien worldview? What does it mean to become “infected” by the aliens and slowly turn into them, being forced by circumstance and the people you want most to belong amongst and to want you among them into bitter, terrible exile?
Dan Carlin spends what feels like an entire episode of Hardcore History – during the Blueprint for Armageddon series – talking about the idea of Marxism as an “intellectual contagion”. I've been mulling that phrase around in my head for a while now. Contagion.
2020 kind of puts the context of how we feel about contagions fresh in our minds, doesn't it?
But what about a virus which could be beneficial? What if there were an idea which were infectious like a virus, but which were good for the person it infected? The Powers That Be – both of and not of this material reality as we understand it – would be highly motivated to make sure that it were considered a contagion, wouldn't they? To convince you to stamp it out of existence.
Is Marxism an actual intellectual contagion?
It is a gateway drug. Like marijuana and premarital sex, it's one of the easiest doors which lead toward escape from The Establishment As It Is.
Is that the same as the Path of Enlightenment?
I don't know. And I think that's where I'm going to leave it for today. Thanks for stopping by. Thanks for your time and your attention.
And maybe take some Vitamin-C – I wouldn't want you catching my thought-Cold.
Comments
Post a Comment