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Easter Eggs Galore
So, it’s Holy Wednesday and we’re gearing up for Easter this coming weekend. Kelly’s got some extra eggs so we can have them decorated in time for the holiday.
Progress
Progress lies not in enhancing what is, but in advancing toward what will be. ~Khalil Gibran
I’ve been making some progress on work projects, publishing projects, household construction projects and have still managed to get a couple nights of restful sleep. That situation is about to improve.
As if sleep could get any better, I got a call from the Phillips people.
They’re finally shipping a replacement CPAP device.
Hopefully, they worked out whatever required the recall, so I can keep this one for a while.
How is my sleep going to improve?
Kelly won’t be able to hear me snoring because I won’t be.
Since I won’t be snoring, she won’t be poking me and I’ll get an even longer stretch of uninterrupted sleep.
Huzzah!
Is there anything more exciting than a good night’s sleep?
In a word, no.
Easter 🌙 Eggs
MOON KNIGHT Episode 3 Breakdown & Ending Explained Spoiler Review | Easter Eggs & Things You Missed
No, not the edible kind, even though they’re great as snacks.
I mean the obsessive nerd kind.
I’m enjoying the Moon Knight series on Disney+ but not as much as the guys who make these videos.
Fortunately, there are people out there who like to obsess about all the little details for those of us who like to watch shows casually.
I’m not one who is terribly concerned about spoilers. I actually prefer to go into a program with a bit of foreknowledge and even a list of Easter Eggs to watch for.
I’ve never felt that spoilers spoil a show for me. Some people absolutely hate spoilers.
There’s a lid for every pot, as they say.
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Extension
My hand is the extension of the thinking process – the creative process. ~Tadao Ando
I’ve been doing a lot of studying recently because I’m still undecided about where to start Book 1 of The Sentinels.
I have a fair amount of source material from my previous iterations but now that I’m trying to apply some structure to make the process go faster and more successfully than before, it causes some difficulty in picking a place to start.
I really want the series to be an ensemble story, but all the stuff I’m listening to is obnoxiously oriented around the concept of a “main character”.
The problem with this is that if I pick a “main character”, people will assume the whole series is about that character.
It’s not.
It’s called The Sentinels because it’s about all of them as a group, like the Avengers or the Justice League.
Sure, I’ll do some one-offs about particular characters.
Given that I decided to do the different phases of the series as a reflection of the Ages of Comics, one of the hallmarks of the Golden Age is that it was largely about individual heroes rather than teams. Even the giant comic book of the Justice Society of America that I got as a kid wasn’t so much a super team as it was an anthology of individual adventures.
As such, I’m not sticking specifically to the spirit of the Golden Age for the first trilogy of the entire tridecology of the core series. The Sentinels series is about the Sentinels and doing the individual “origin stories” a la the MCU isn’t part of my plan.
The Avengers in the MCU were introduced in each of their origin story stand-alones before bringing them together as the Avengers in the eponymous movie. Given the history of the comics, it was understood that (as long as the individual stories did well in the box office) the team would eventually form and more world-saving adventures would ensue.
My guys don’t do that sort of thing.
C’mon, Rob. What’s the point of superheroes who don’t save the world?
Yeah, sorry. That sort of thing bores me.
Yes, I said it’s boring. All this Chosen One stuff blows and so does saving the world.
The problem is baked into the tropes. If you’re the Chosen One, you’re almost guaranteed to win.
There are some interesting inversions of that trope, but that’s not the story I choose to tell. Not with the Sentinels, at least.
Likewise with saving the world: what’s the alternative? What do you write if our heroes fail to save the world?
Okay, Avengers: Endgame sort of addresses this but, in fairness, only half of the universe was depopulated. That’s not the end of the world (or the universe, for that matter). It’s depressing and alarming and dreadful, but it’s still not the end of the world or the universe.
If you’re trying to save the world and you fail, the world (universe, dimension, multiverse…) is gone. End of story. You literally have to make that the last page of your story unless you choose to make your denouement a panoramic survey of the destruction.
Yeah, that’s a bit too much “conflict” for me, thanks.
I’m also pretty put off by the insistence on failure in storytelling.
To be fair, struggle makes for an interesting story, but the formula presented is that every single action results in devastating failure.
Seriously? How the hell does anybody get out of bed without breaking both of their legs and both of their arms in this scenario?
Their contention is that random stuff like that doesn’t get in the book anyway. Anything you succeed at is boring exposition that weighs down the narrative. Anything that moves the plot forward must, of necessity, be a white-knuckle struggle that is frought with heart-wrenching failure.
Jeez, gimme a break.
I don’t mind a Try-Fail Cycle as long as it results in a meaningful outcome. The Yes, But / No, And structure mitigates the insistence on continuous, abject failure described in other writing advice columns.
I’m not here to save the world. I just want to examine some basic What Ifs.
What’s the best place to start that journey? I’ll let you know when I figure it out…
That’s it for today. I hope you’re having a productive week and a lot of restful sleep.