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Labor Day Weekend 2022

Two 🌞Summers🔥 down and one to go…

Staycation

If all the cars in the United States were placed end to end, it would probably be Labor Day Weekend. ~Doug Larson

Three 🌞Summers🔥, Rob? What in tarnation are you talking about?

As it turns out, there are astronomical seasons (the ones we’re most familiar with), meteorological seasons and commercial seasons.

Astronomical seasons are those we see on the calendar, pertaining to the Solstices and Equinoxes. They tend to begin on or around the 21st of March, June, September and December.

Meteorological seasons pertain to the basic weather profiles. They start on the 1st of March, June, September and December.

Commercial seasons are less uniform in length and purpose. Commercial 🌞Summer🔥 begins on Memorial Day and ends on Labor Day. This is when kids are normally home from school and families take their vacations.

Unlike astronomical and meteorological seasons, the commercial seasons are purpose-based. They’re more like Liturgical Seasons in that there are more than four and they’re somewhat random in length.

That being said, meteorological 🌞Summer🔥 ended on Wednesday the 31st. Commercial 🌞Summer🔥 ends on Monday and astronomical 🌞Summer🔥 drags on until the 22nd. Blech!

Even so, I can be grateful that it’s two down and one to go until it is officially and finally my favorite season.

As for this long holiday weekend, I’m going to do my favorite thing: Stay home and enjoy my cozy little house.

I’ve got a number of projects to attend to. No time for gallivanting around, thank you very much.

Remains To Be Seen

Rings of Power Episode 1 BREAKDOWN | Lord of the Rings on Prime Explained

Rings of Power Episode 2 BREAKDOWN | Lord of the Rings on Prime Explained

One of those things is to dig in to some new fantasy series that have dropped recently.

There’s the Game of Thrones prequel series, House of the Dragon, and the Lord of the Rings prequel series, The Rings of Power.

While these certainly have the potential to get my head out of the superhero genre, I enjoy these two properties and would like to see how the new series handle the freedom of quasi-canonical grey areas.

As the Game of Thrones thing goes, GRRM is deep in it. So, it’s canonical in that sense, but it’s non-canonical in the sense that the names and deeds of a lot of these Targaryen and Targaryen-aligned characters weren’t mentioned or detailed in the original series of books or TV shows.

For the Lord of the Rings, Amazon purchased rights to operate in a time that Professor Tolkien provided only the vaguest of outlines or historical occurrences. As such, even though they are permitted to use core characters such as Elrond and Galadriel, it’s deliberately non-canonical.

Canon or no canon, these shows will have lives of their own and will be judged on their own merits by all but the most stringent of superfans. Oh, and also the random morons who want to judge things on their perceived wokeness.

Okay, I’ll grant you that a lot of what’s produced by mainstream entertainment outlets is influenced by the wokeness of some of the stakeholders or the feigned wokeness of those who think they have to pander to a certain audience in order to boost ticket sales.

Hollywood is in California. We get it. You’re not likely to get a middle-of-the-road perspective from anything coming out of Hollywood these days. So what?

Unless it’s straight-up propaganda, it’s the story that matters. If something genuinely sucks today, it’s going to still suck a few decades from now when the culture wars are focused on some other front.

Correspondingly, if it only sucks today because people are sick of the woke-tones of the show or movie, it may wind up being enjoyable for the story content once the culture storm subsides. I intend to give both shows a chance. If they absolutely suck, I’ll admit it.

Character Arcs

Only the wisest and stupidest of men never change. ~Confucius

This hot take from the ancient Chinese philosopher applies to characters as well.

Characters may or may not have a personal development arc in a story. Unlike dear old Confucius, I’m not planning to judge.

Some author-tubers (people on YouTube who talk about writing) will tell you that stories are either plot-driven or character-driven. As Shawn Spencer would say, “I’ve heard it both ways.” The best stories actually feature both.

It’s all well and good to have characters grow and learn from the torment foisted upon them by the storyteller, but the torment is less poignant if the characters don’t actually do anything.

Let’s consider one of my favorite character arcs ever: A Christmas Carol. Complete character transformation lacking specific action can certainly be a great story. Ebeneezer has a dramatic redemption arc, and that is basically all.

He doesn’t have to save any princesses. He’s not dropping a magic ring into a volcano.

He doesn’t have to save London from a dragon, an alien invasion, a plummeting meteorite or a devastating plague.

He just has to stop being a dick. Merry Christmas and God bless us, every one.

A fantastic story in and of itself. Sure, the ghosts drag him all around to show him the error of his ways, but he’s not doing anything particularly plot-oriented. He’s simply given a reason and a chance to change. He takes it. Arc complete, end of story. Yay.

On the other hand, a plot-heavy story without character arc is the very heart of most action stories. Certainly, part of the drama is to put them to a test that challenges their obviously kick-ass awesomeness, but they don’t necessarily “grow” from it in the sense that Ebeneezer Scrooge did.

A plot-heavy, arc-light story is basically anything with James Bond, Mack Bolan, Jack Reacher, John Wick or some other character who has already been there, done that and can carry out a mission with extreme efficiency and maximum violence.

Golden Age Batman would fall into this category. As originally written, Batman had already gone through his origin story outside of the scope of the comics. He was a mysterious, masked detective and action hero with a cape.

On the other hand, after decades of character development on the pages of comics, the Christopher Nolan trilogy of Batman movies presents an arc in each movie and a full series arc.

In Batman Begins, Bruce Wayne is a traumatized child who has grown into an aimless, traumatized wanderer. By the end of The Dark Knight Rises, Bruce and Batman have been through so much more trauma, turmoil and personal growth that he’s able to simply let it go and finally get on with his life.

Some people think these movies are a bit over the top and perhaps melodramatic. Um, superhero movie. If your main character has a cape, a cowl and a utility belt, it’s a given that the story mechanics are going to be over the top.

That being said, in stories where Batman is not the main character, he’s typically a flat-arc character like James Bond or Jack Reacher.

He’s just a super-competent character who is nigh unbeatable. He’s the guy you want to have your back and you don’t particularly need him to have any emotional, spiritual or developmental breakthroughs. You just need him to help you kick someone’s ass and put them in jail.

Another fantastic example of plot-heavy, arc-heavy story is The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Frodo starts off as a reasonably respectable member of the local gentry with reasonably conservative provincial attitudes and beliefs. Having been adopted by his eccentric uncle, Bilbo, he was always regarded with some suspicion. The locals were half-waiting for him to go off and have an adventure. Frodo, however, was not. He was perfectly happy in Bag End and would have lived a normal, respectable life if possible.

Unfortunately for him, it was not possible. Bilbo’s adventure had not only brought the taint of suspicion to the name of Baggins, but had also brought the One Ring out from the dark reaches of Gollum’s cave to threaten all of Middle Earth.

Once Gandalf came to realize that Bilbo’s magic ring was more than just a trinket that conveniently made him invisible, it fell to Frodo to see it through to its destruction.

The decision to give up his comfortable life in order to take this world-threatening artifact into the heart of Mordor to see it destroyed required a lot of character growth. Poor Frodo just wanted to hang around the Shire and drink beer with his friends.

To come from being some random guy, living an idyllic life in a rural community that’s blithely unaware of the growing darkness to being a guy, literally crawling through the blasted wasteland of Mordor on a mission to destroy this ring once and for all is quite an arc.

Giving up comfort is one thing. One can reasonably expect that this would be a temporary inconvenience.

Giving up hope is an entirely different matter. Frodo is given such dreadful obstacles to overcome on the road to the Cracks of Doom, that the old Frodo from home would scarcely recognize who he’d become. Even so, he pressed on because the task needed to be completed and everyone else who encountered the ring became twisted by its evil influence.

As Gandalf predicted, a modicum of Hobbit-sense was what the fate of the entire world depended on. This simple mixture of innocence and grit were the antidote to Sauron’s all-encompassing evil.

Saving the world at the expense of your sense of self is the epitome of plot-heavy, arc-heavy fiction.

Few people can match that level of lore, drama and excellence.

Few people need to.

Certainly, decades of study, high intelligence, deep faith and personal experience in the battlefields of WWI helped Professor Tolkien concoct a story that is unlikely to be matched or exceeded anytime soon.

Not everything needs to be all that.

We can tell compelling stories that have satisfying character development, compelling plots or both.

It’s okay to just tell a good story. With practice, you might even wind up telling a great story.

The most important point is, if you want to tell a story then do so.

The gatekeepers are gone.

You don’t need to seek the approval of the Big Five or any other traditional publishing house.

There are some benefits to going Trad-Pub, but it’s no longer required.

You can publish a book on Amazon for free.

You can record yourself reading a story in audio and put it on a podcasting service like SoundCloud.

You can record yourself reading a story and publish it on YouTube or any other video platform.

You can do it.

With practice, you can do it better.