Day 5, part 3

I realized that the first post of today was called Day 3 part 1, and I'm now like, no wait, that should be Day 4. And so I'm overcompensating in the other direction with this post's name.

Starting tomorrow I'm incorporating the date and time of the writing into the posts' names as I'd originally intended, so, for example, this post would be called "1/4/15 10:00-10:30 PM." But anyway.

I thought I'd take some time to clarify the obscure before we continue on with our little escapade...

Michael (Berryman? Champion? Martin?) does live in modern-day, Santa Barbara or something (I want a location that I'm at least sort of familiar with but will still be recognizable to audiences; most of the cities I know are Podunk though)-- this is a supernatural setting, but it's not medieval or renaissance fantasy or anything; I'm not sure how clear I made that in the pitch. There's a human world, and then there's a supernatural world- this guy's rubbing shoulders with Dresden and Potter, although in feel and flair I'm envisioning it to be a tad more like the former than the latter.

Also, the question has been brought to my attention: why would Michael find it sometimes harder than other times to extricate himself from danger, if his knack for getting out of supernatural trouble is supernatural itself? I hadn't given it much thought till that question was vocalized, always just figuring it's for kind of obvious reasons. But hoo boy, you never really know something until you realize how much of it you can put into words, and this inquisition is making me realize my (till now) lack of the ability to do just that. So.

The Superman Problem is an oft-discussed one (link to post by Dan Wells, another terrific influence on this project.) Would Michael be too powerful if it were always easy for him? Characters don't need inherent "weaknesses," so long as they're still well written and put into interesting situations that test them with questions no one can answer perfectly. A character without anything to do is a boring one, to be sure, but there's a broad broad plain in between "invulnerable character" and "character who does nothing." It's put on our dude in the center a heavy moral problem- if you can do basically anything, but can only be in one place at once, which places do you go and why? This is why Superman is also Clark Kent- one of those occupations may be sexier, it is true, but without the reporter on the scene swaying public opinion and making quieter but wider-spread change, going out there and fighting fire with fire is doing more harm than good, always.

 I hope Michael doesn't turn you off with his seeming invulnerability, then- the solution to a jam is always there, but only if he's paying enough attention to realize it. Sometimes you get too stubborn, or too proud, to see the exit. Sometimes you kick yourself over a solution that seems so obvious in retrospect. Sometimes you let yourself get captured, for the greater good. I imagine it to be much like the battle of free will against temptation: God wouldn't allow us to be put into a position that it's outside of our power to resist, but we're going to continue screwing up anyway, with nobody to blame but ourselves.

So, yes, some exits are more obvious than others- sometimes what's lacking is an obvious way out, or an essential resource of some kind, which makes things seem so much more difficult than they should be. It's always like in Portal, or some other puzzle video game: the level you're on may be deucedly difficult, but the programmers wouldn't design a level that's absolutely impossible, would they? It just takes some thinking outside of the box.