- I needn't have been concerned about finding out how gambits work- from what I see on TV Tropes, as long as things turn out well for you, you can just claim that you'd planned it to be that way from the inception. Because, seriously, there are like a grazillion different gambits, and I'm not exaggerating much-- seriously a grazillion gambits. Do me a favor, click on that link and try counting the number it lists yourself.
- Takashi Murakami is God.
Also, sort of a half-thing that I learned, TV Tropes is not the greatest research tool if you're genuinely trying to be productive. I already knew that, but, it keeps rerevealing itself with a wanion. (First rule of writing a book, all you aspiring novelists: trope responsibly.)
Time to get genuinely down: (gambit as part of series name? too on the nose? something about ghosts still?) How's my checklist of things I want to research? There was another thing, there's a term in Celtic mythology or something that describes exactly what I'm going for in Michael's blessing/curse... can't find it right now (and it may be in some other mythological system entirely; could be Polynesian for all I know (researched a lot about classical mythology from all over the world as part of my mission-- basically the greatest job in the world; you get to learn about all kinds of weird conceptions in interesting circumstances...)) so I'll just leave that for another day. I don't really have a lot on my plate, but I do want to get a lot of things done; it all comes down to time management-- first item on my to-do list, though, is of course actually getting a to-do list.
For now, I've got a few more minutes here left in the hour. And, call TV Tropes a black hole of time as much as you want (I'm powerless to argue against you,) I never come out of it uninspired. (Don't trope and drive.)
You know that thing where the chessmaster makes a, stratagem (argh I'm trying to avoid overrepetition of the word "gambit" here and it's not working! but stratagem's a good word, if a tad clumsy for this use) and everything goes exactly how he planned it somehow, and your mind is blown, but then later you realize that the plan would have fallen apart epically had one thing misbehaved, which kind of strains credulity with all those myriad things going on? Batman gambit, I mentioned on my list of gambits to look up specifically- that's where your plan goes off successfully because people act how you'd expect them to-- this goes several crazy steps beyond that, to successfully predicting the behavior of entire crowds, and outcomes of events you shouldn't rationally be able to predict the outcome of. Made me think of this:
That may be pushing things, anticipating with that degree of precision, as we see in the inherent ridiculousness of the twists in the clip above (at least with Batman, you can logically expect the Riddler to behave like the Riddler, but if you honestly think you'll be able to predict everything, expectations fall apart within seconds upon contact with the outside world (8.6 seconds given adequate vacuuming systems, to be precise.)) But it got me thinking:
Yes, some behavior is reasonably predictable-- people who've known each other for a very long time can allegedly predict each others' sentences (although I've never actually seen that in real life, come to think of it... shoot, no, wait, that's damaging my argument, never mind.) Even if a sniper is able to lead his target, does he know the endgame to anything? Can you really predict such wildly complex behavior, and pull such a gambit in real life? I mean, what are the certainties.
And it hit me: the certainties are, that Michael will win.
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