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Weary Wednesday
The year is off to a hot start even though the weather has been pleasingly frigid. It’s only Wednesday and I’m already exhausted.
Trivialities
There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge. ~Bertrand Russell
My ecclectic taste in subject matter has always helped me at work and in social situations.
The ability to absorb information quickly and latch onto the key conceptual nuggets is a key asset when you need to hop between different disciplines on a regular basis.
Of course, there’s always the danger of overloading. Taking in too much, too quickly can have adverse effects.
On the other hand, I also have the ability to lock in on a train of thought and obsess the living daylights out of it. That’s been the first half of the week. Trying to take a jumbled mess and turn it into a meaningful tapestry of awesomeness has had me quite busy for rather unfortunate spans of time.
Oh well, at least I’ve got something useful to do and, in theory, when it’s done, it’s done and I can move on to something else that’s challenging, interesting and pays the bills.
Spidey Got Pwned By JJJ
J.J. Jameson Wearing Spider-Man Suit – Deleted Scene – Spider-Man 2.1 (2004) Movie Clip HD
There are different kinds of antagonists in any given story.
People automatically consider an antagonist to be the villain. All it really means is that somebody is working at cross-purposes to the main character(s).
In the case of Spider-Man, he’s got more than a few villains who are up to some pretty nefarious ends. On the other hand, he’s got J Jonah Jameson who just wants to rain on Spidey’s parade.
In the deleted scene (above), JJJ celebrates his temporary win over the wallcrawler by jumping around his office in the suit that Peter discarded in order to try to get his life back in order.
As with most heroes, stuff hit the fan and Peter needed to retrieve his suit and get back to work. JJJ was suitably irritated and Spider-Man was back to his “With great power comes great responsibility” duties.
Even so, this scene is utterly priceless. I wish they’d left it in the original theatrical release of Spider-Man 2.
Connections
Creativity is the power to connect the seemingly unconnected. ~William Plomer
One of my favorite series to watch was James Burke’s Connections. He’d start off with a seemingly random historical event and demonstrate how completely unrelated events around the world connected to result in one of our modern conveniences.
Not only did this excite my interest in random trivia, but it also demonstrated how a Dickensian plot can play out in reality just as well as it does in the mind of a crafty author.
I think this is the sort of thing that makes fiction most interesting.
Tom Clancy’s description of the “fizzle” in The Sum Of All Fears is an instance of how a “perfectly executed plot” can still go off the rails due to incidental mishap. The villains had intended to nuke the Superbowl, but the detonation failed to reach critical mass and achieve the intended nuclear explosion.
It’s this sort of “For Want Of A Nail” occurrence that can lead to interesting plot twists. Did a part snap, causing a well-laid plan to fail? Did somebody slip on a wet floor causing a fleeing accomplice to be caught? These little twists make for more interesting storytelling than having things go perfectly.
It’s a hallmark of the heist genre. These stories depend on a complex Rube Goldberg of a plan to be executed by people who are often not in contact with each other during the commission of the heist. There’s always a wrinkle in the rug and it’s fascinating to watch the heist team members work to adapt to the change in situation so they can still do what needed doing in order to pull off the job.
It’s something I intend to work into my stories in every genre. We’ll see how it turns out…
There’s still plenty of week and plenty of work to get done in the course of it. I hope you’re having a productive week as well.