This is MJ Munoz, you are listening to Story Over Everything, the chronicles of an author,
artist and analyzer.
The date is September 30th, 2022.
I'm going to talk about a little, well, here's a tease for a little story idea I'm going
to be working on live with you here and now, and this is how it goes:
What if there were guardian angels in the form of magical talking bugs sent out from
Heaven to help kids?
Alright, so my first segment is going to be work in progress, and I want to talk to you
about what is the status of my current projects: progress made, length of time on the back
burner, that sort of thing.
So it's a very personal, or it's a very busy time for me in my personal life, so I have
not actively worked on most of my projects that I have going.
I have, on the back burner an artist who's supposed to be working on my breastfeeding
book.
It's a informative, educational, sweet, cute, pretty, breastfeeding book to help older siblings,
I guess first borns or otherwise, who are going to be having a nursling in the house
soon, to understand why their baby sibling is going to be drinking milk from their mother
and what all the benefits of breastfeeding are and why a mother might choose to breastfeed
her child because of all the good things about it.
There's good, there's bad, there's funny, there's silly, there's a whole gamut of things,
but it is framed in a very positive way to make it normal, to encourage it, to make it
a, to show it to be a beautiful thing.
You know, beautiful but also silly and fun at some times.
So my artist who I have contracted to work on that, not contracted per se, but who is
set to work on that, hasn't done anything on it, and that's mostly my fault.
I'm supposed to give thumbnail sketches for that.
Speaking of which, the idea I brought up about these guardian angel bugs is actually something
that I have scripts on, and I'm kind of cheating with this segment I'm going to do at the end,
which is where I live write things.
I actually have five books planned, and I guess I'll talk about that more when I get
to it, but the first one, I'm supposed to also be getting thumbnails and descriptions
to an artist because I have the first two scripts for those books finished actually,
so I need to work on that.
And as far as stuff on the back burner, the superhero pulp novels are all on the back
burner.
I do have a rough outline of 12 books for one character.
I don't know that I want to do 12 books for every character if I just want to do 12 books
for the flagship character in each era, or if I need to plan them out and then execute
based on how well they're received, so I'm not 100% sure about that, but that's an idea.
And then I actually have another children's picture book series, so the breastfeeding
one is a single book, one and done.
The other one, which is the bugs, the guardian angel bugs, that's a series of five books
that I have planned.
And then the other one, it's a fantasy story with a dragon, and I have plans to do maybe
four books for that, or I could do more.
I could start with four and then have that be like kind of wave one, and then I don't
know if the stories will grow up with the kids or just be geared towards different kids
after that or whatever, but that's something on the back burner as well.
So there's also kind of a tie-in fun anthology style superhero book, all of the good night
Darth Vader type thing where you get to see all these different characters from the Star
Wars universe.
Of course, I'd be doing a book about superhero characters that I've invented and that I've
created, so children wouldn't know them, but I figure if it's constructed cleverly enough,
it should work.
I'm trying to think of a world where you're introduced to many characters from many different
worlds, so to speak, at one time.
The Incredibles comes to mind, maybe stuff from...
Oh dear, what's that one called?
Wreck-It Ralph, where you have all those other video game characters, although there's a
lot of nostalgic characters, there's also the use of some brand new characters of franchises
in that world.
Also, it's odd, my kids have been watching Toy Story recently, and Buzz Lightyear and
Woody are new, Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head, the Etch A Sketch, those are egg-stamped toys.
I don't know about Slinky Dog or Piggy Bank is just a kind of generic thing and a dinosaur
toy.
So I don't know.
I figure as long as the cast is charming and the material is handled cleverly, you can
kind of make a thing or an ensemble out of anything.
Do I dare to do that myself?
Yes, I do dare.
I do dare and I hope that with my daring do, that I will be successful.
So anyway, that's it for the work in progress.
What about completed works?
Well, I'm an author, an artist, and an analyzer, and I've accomplished three analyses this
week.
They were for two Tokusatsu shows directly and a Tokusatsu-inspired anime Tokusatsu's
live action Japanese special effects shows.
The word Tokusatsu literally means special effects in Japanese and mostly it's men in
rubber costumes fighting other men in rubber costumes and that's what it's about.
Power Rangers comes from Super Sentai.
Power Rangers comes from, or Super Sentai comes from Kamen Rider.
Kamen Rider comes from Ultraman, so to speak, in a way.
And Ultraman comes from Godzilla.
And really, I guess you could say the Tokusatsu genre comes from stuff like Godzilla.
I don't think Godzilla was absolutely the first, but it's one of the biggest, most impactful,
and I guess one of the best.
It's a Tokusatsu exemplar.
So it doesn't always have to be giant monsters, but it is definitely, you know, if you think
about Godzilla rampaging through a city, he's knocking things, you know, first of all, they
had to make him look giant, so they built sets in such a way to use force perspective
and they had to create the monster suit to look a certain way.
So that's where the rubber suit stuff comes in.
And then when he's knocking over electrical wires and, you know, smashing tanks and things
like that, and, you know, they had to have miniature-sized tanks scaled to this, you
know, this gentleman who was in the suit in order to make it look like real ships flying,
you know, flying planes with guns on them were attacking him and real tanks on the ground
were attacking him.
And then, you know, for his counterattack, they had to show all those things.
So they did that by, you know, creating miniature sets and using different types of props and
having them destroyed with explosions or getting knocked or flipped over, different things
like that.
So anyway, that's the, like I said, the best example of tokusatsu.
And even if you're not, even if your tastes aren't as eccentric as mine, you could say,
you've probably seen Godzilla and know what that is.
And, you know, at minimum, you're aware of the modern Godzilla movies or like the King
Kong movies, which I'm not going to say, I'm not going to accuse them of being like inspired
by Godzilla.
In fact, Godzilla might have been inspired to some extent by King Kong.
I don't know the history there and I haven't looked it up and I'm not going to right now
because it's not relevant.
But anyway, that's the stuff I'm into.
And all three shows that I watched and analyzed this week are in that realm.
So all three of them do come from Japan.
Two of them were actually all three of them are subtitled.
Unfortunately, the anime did not get a dub, which disappoints me because I'm a fan of
dubs.
But anyway, I did analysis of those three shows.
One of them is 30 out of 50 or so episodes in the other one is four out of 50 or so episodes
in and the anime is nine out of I think 12 episodes in.
So in three more weeks, I'll be done with that.
But then a new Tokusatsu show will be starting up, which is actually inspired by one of my
favorite entries in the Common Writer series.
It's called Common Writer Black Sun.
It's based off of Common Writer Black.
But anyway, I analyzed those and you know, why am I wasting my time doing that?
Maybe you might want to ask if I'm a writer and I'm supposed to be writing these other
things.
But the things that I'm writing are very much steeped in and based on Tokusatsu, very inspired
by Tokusatsu.
So I'm keeping current with Tokusatsu.
I do plan for my stories to be timeless.
And I do think the theme of that Godzilla movie, the original Godzilla is timeless,
which is why I'm using it as the basis for the first children's picture book in the Tokusatsu
series, you could say.
And that's the one with the magical talking bugs, which there's a magical talking bug
in one of the Common Writer movies.
So you know, it all ties together.
But regardless, you know, I'm watching them because I honestly find that the Common Writer
and Super Sentai series and the anime as well, because it is based off of Common Writer,
has compelling writing, there are things to learn in them.
And I think that's something I want to talk about real quick.
So yeah, I have a segment called Lessons Learned, and it's where I tell you what lessons I learned
from the world of story this week.
And you know, like I said, the world of story that I've been involved with is these three
shows.
So one of them, I'll start with the Futopi, which is the anime, it's a sequel to the completed
live action series of Common Writer Double.
Futopi Episode 9 is the end of a three episode arc that has a, it's a bottle episode murder
mystery where basically these two heroes are stuck at a cabin in the mountains because
there's a blizzard.
And the reason there's a murder mystery aspect to it is because these four women who are
contestants in a competition to marry a wealthy man whose family seems to have ties to crime,
whether that be Yakuza or some other criminal enterprise, they are dying.
So over the course of three episodes, I believe two of the women die and I think a third individual
dies related to it, but it's not one of the women contestants because at the end there
are two female contestants who are left.
I believe that's correct.
Not that you care and not that it really matters because I'm just kind of giving you the rough
context.
It's a detective story, the two gentlemen who are stuck up in the mountains and who
stumble into this murder mystery are detectives who also happen to be a superhero called Common
Writer Double and they're actually able to transform by both of them.
One of them, his mind goes into the body of the other one and the two brains in one body
that has two halves that they each control fight together and they, you know, come up
with clever ways to do things because they're both, you know, they both have good intuition
and intelligence because they're a detective and basically a genius who has access to a
wide variety of information.
I honestly, that this ninth episode was a downgrade from the others recently.
I'll put it this way, the first six episodes of the series were really solid and the seventh
was okay, the eighth was not so great and the ninth was probably the worst so far or
maybe it was the eighth that was the worst so far but I think the issue for me was that
these ones, this story being told in three parts, which it's an adaptation from a manga
so the idea with manga to some extent is it's kind of like the old serialized stories like
Swiss Family Robinson for example, they're meant to keep you coming back.
You just, you read a little bit of it in a circular, in a periodical that's circulated
in whatever fashion and they're published weekly or however, you know, whatever rate
and then they're collected into a single story but the idea is they want to keep you interested
in it forever and they want to keep the mystery running forever so there's a ongoing mystery
that the characters, the detectives have stumbled upon and it's sort of getting dragged out.
There was some revelations that they had but I think the biggest takeaway for me from Fu
to a PI9 is that sometimes you can, you know, it's okay to play fast and loose with your
rules because they're very serious about doing like a debriefing after each mystery and each
case is closed where they go over the details and show logically how, even though there
are fantastical elements in the world, how these things could have all happened in a
reasonable logical way and I found that to be distracting and distasteful and I think
maybe the lesson to take from that is you need to be careful not to be a slave to your
format if you're trying to be a pastiche of another genre because that can be wearing
and trying.
Like you want to capture certain elements but maybe you don't need to close with a debrief
every three episodes and have all the facts of the case gone over because, you know, maybe
your audience is smart enough to know or maybe the rest of the, like the narrative, I guess
velocity or momentum is enough so that people can be entertained by that and not need to
go over the facts and as long as you as the author know the facts maybe you don't need
to belabor them and go over them sort of needlessly to your audience.
Maybe that's something I learned from that.
Next I'll talk about Comminator Geed's episode 4.
So I think the most important thing I learned from this and it's basically people are in
a game, a survival game where they're all competing to win and whoever wins will have
their desire granted at the end of it or their one wish granted.
It's world changing, the stakes are super high but the players, their lives are on the
line and they die as, supposedly, they die as the rounds continue and as players are
eliminated they're literally killed and I believe the game started off with like 50
people and this is a children's show in Japan.
I don't think I'd ever want to craft a show like that with those sorts of stakes or a
story with those kinds of stakes for kids because that's just too dark, that's unnecessary.
Japan has a different culture and despite the fact that these are aimed at younger kids,
it's culturally acceptable to them I guess although I don't know, I haven't heard of
any flak that they're catching from having this be the idea of the story but not something
I would want to do.
So maybe that's one lesson I learned but I also learned you can kind of get away with
it but that's not what I mean.
I'm not interested in pushing the boundaries of what you can get children to learn.
I'm not interested in pushing boundaries like that.
Anyway, but more importantly what I learned from this episode was that you have the hero
of the piece, he goes by Ace.
He is, he seems to be stuck in this game and I suspect that he's trying to be a true hero
and pull out a victory and kind of destroy the sick game from within by winning enough
times or getting enough power for himself.
I'm not sure what but he definitely seems to be upset about this game but you have to
play to win.
If you don't play to win you die and then if you die you have no opportunity to change
anything and to counter that concept or to really bring it into sharp relief there's
a character who suffered a tragedy and because of having suffered that tragedy became nihilistic
to the point where they want all humans to die and they see this game where they can
have any wish granted as an opportunity to wipe out all human life on the planet.
Now this character becomes seriously debilitated or injured and their efforts become hampered
and instead of fighting to win to the very end they try to sabotage and use subterfuge
to bring everybody else down with them and in the end they only accomplish their own
death.
He accomplishes nothing and then he leaves the game and this world with nasty words for
the other characters that the rest of them are going to die and only one of them will
survive and he seems like he feels justified in that.
Now the writer of the show has done very solid character work so one I suspect that it's
not actually a real death game like I don't think these people are actually dying I think
there's they're being put in suspension somehow and they will never be used for this game
again but the other thing is I and partly because I suspect this character will come
back and we'll have more to say in the in the end but before well basically the main
character who says you have to fight to win and who's been willing to trick people in
order to win and to get an advantage so that he can stay on top even though he's moral
he is shown to help people which I won't go into that he has a morality but he also has
a desire to win above all else because I guess because the six is why and there's a something
in there about the ends justifying the means but I'm uncomfortable with that idea I think
that you have to be moral you have to be upright and what you do and that you can't you know
do evil for the sake of good necessarily and that actually well I won't get into that side
tangent but he basically gives a speech towards the end and throughout the episode it's kind
of peppered this idea that you have to keep fighting you have to keep trying you can't
give up because if you give up and you're not fully committed to the point where you're
willing to sacrifice yourself to see your goals met that your dreams and your wishes
can never become reality so that's a corny idea it that could be a corny idea but it's
not believe in yourself it's if you want something you have to work for it and I like how the
more was put across because nobody ever felt sanctimonious and I won't go into all the
details but I guess there's a clever way that you can write like clear morals that are you
know simple I guess you could say that you might find in like a ASAP table or something
like that you can write these clear very upright morals into something that has like a moral
greatness to it or has characters who are acting in less than wonderful ways and I think
that's interesting really what that inspires me to do though is to think of how can I frame
and shape the narrative or the message or the themes in my stories in order to give
positive healthy uplifting messages without coming out and doing a you know a look right
at the camera so to speak speech that's you know cheesy and supposedly inspiring but perhaps
uninspiring instead because that's something I would like to avoid as a writer and then
last last is a T at the end of that word last the super sent I entry was Don Brothers 30
and I don't know the writer of it is a prolific writer in the genre he's been hired again
and again and again by the same company over the course of I think 30 years and there may
be some nepotism in it because his father actually wrote for the original common writer
which I said earlier common writer gave birth to super sent I or the success of common writer
led to the development of super sent I and he started working on super sent I believe
in the mid 80s and he's worked on and off of it for a long time and then he actually
I was wondering a while back where he went because I hadn't seen him being active but
he seems to be here he came back for the super sent I he was also writing a manga adaptation
which is a Japanese comic book adaptation of the comeback series of common writer from
the year 2000 so apparently he's been busy with that apparently it's been ongoing for
like six years I think is what it is and that's pretty impressive to me but anyway regardless
he is a talented writer I really like one of his other shows I think I've seen two of
his shows besides this one that I'm currently watching and there's something about his writing
that I just feel is I don't know utterly competent very charming he creates characters who you
shouldn't like and then you like them and he has his characters doing things that you
might find reprehensible and yet there is they're charming enough that you don't mind
it's very odd he's a very skilled writer he does certain weird things and he almost seems
to like purposely antagonize the audience or maybe the bosses around him by some of
the things that he does and yet he continues to have success as a writer and I don't know
I don't quite know what it is there's something about him like flaunting and bending rules
or conventions maybe kind of to be subversive but in a very I don't know in a very pleasing
way where it feels fresh and exciting and not like a betrayal of the very thing that
it is like none of his stuff in this super sent I show feels not like super sent I or
like it goes against the spirit of super sent I but it definitely feels offbeat and weird
and like I said fresh and bold so I don't know really how to define that other than
once you've become a skilled enough writer you can really play in your genre of choice
and be successful by like you know subverting things or handling things in a very interesting
unexpected way and I'm not sure what else to say but his name is Toshiki Inoue and like
I said I think he's one of the best writers that I've ever encountered even though I've
only well these shows are 50 episodes long so I've seen for sure one show to completion
and then 30 episodes of this show which he's written almost all of them but I'm confident
that I've seen at least one other of his shows all the way through so I'm not quite sure
but anyway that's that's pretty interesting to me so that's my lessons learned and then
this last segment segment like I teased earlier Fabula Ex Machina is what I'm calling it I
am going to be sort of brainstorming and drafting out loud how I can make this insect guardian
angel or bug because it's it's not just insects particularly if we'll let's be pedantic about
for a moment an insect is a six-legged creature arachnids like spiders and scorpions don't
fit into that I don't know that class that phylum that kingdom or whatever they're similar
so I'm gonna generically call them bugs so that will be your instinct insects of various
designs like a beetle for example a worm whether that be a grub or like an earthworm which
your grubs typically turn into insects if I don't know if a worm is not a bug or not
if it's or I don't know if a worm is not an insect or or what by the scientific classification
but that's what I mean when I say bug so I've got a spider guardian angel bug I have I think
a moth I'm gonna use moth spider beetle and I can't remember the others at the moment
off my head but that's not really important right now what's important is that I'm I'm
letting you know and I'm cheating a little bit this is my own thing so I can do whatever
I want however I want but basically the idea that I'm gonna be working on for five to ten
minutes because I don't want to be too I don't want to bore you too much by getting into
the nitty-gritty details of something that I don't quite I don't quite have hammered
down so it could be uninteresting to hear me stumble and fumble although it could be
entertaining I don't know but basically I'm gonna be jumping into this and saying all
right so here's my idea angel bug or bug guardian angels inspired by Godzilla and other Japanese
tokusatsu type stuff like the things I've been describing to you how will that work how can
I make that a children's picture book series and how will I make all of that fit into a
single world so again if you want to leave because I'm gonna be going off in crazy directions
that's fine I understand but if you want to stick around for the ride then I welcome you
to do so all right so you may not you may not know this but I did step away from the
recording I ended up making some notes this is supposed to be a very light duty type of
show even though I noticed it's already almost a half an hour long which I did not expect
that to be something like 10 minutes but we'll see if following weeks I have a lot less to
say or there's a lot less to talk about or maybe I'll just get better at it and become
more succinct and I can kill my darlings and cut those cut cut cut those words away until
there's just left what you want to hear and what you need to hear and what I need to say
so anyway moving on from that I wanted to share that I have I'm not gonna re-explain
the whole tokusatsu thing because that's Godzilla, Ultraman, Kamen Rider, Super Sentai, Power
Rangers, I don't know what other stuff off the top of my head but that kind of stuff
Kikaiiter if you're from Hawaii and you're like 50 years old you might know Kikaiiter
you could be you can know Kikaiiter if you're a little younger too but that kind of stuff
anyway but here's my prompt well yeah so I guess this is what I'm trying to do how can
I weave a universe out of these disparate elements and it's all these different things
because Toho is just one company owns Godzilla and they make Godzilla Toei which is I don't
know why they're both T or start with the T sound but whatever owns Kamen Rider and
Super Sentai and Tsuburaya which also starts with the T which is kind of funny or a TS
I don't know if it's its own unique character or whatever in Japanese or Chinese that has
the TS sound to it and I know it's from Japan but Japan they use like three different writing
systems or writing styles or letters so they have like Chinese characters and then they
have two different ones that there's like a sound for each letter I think more analogous
to the 26 letter alphabet we have in English speaking countries anyway I don't know all
the details but there's Katagana, Hiragana and some other thing I think which is the
Chinese symbols but that's a weird tangent sorry about that I just I know a little bit
about a lot of things and it's hard for me not to share so my point is I've got all these
disparate things they all exist in their own universes and even among the franchises themselves
it's weird how they all are facing a threat from 10,000 years ago that was sealed away
and then one day it was awakened and only this hero so even among themselves there's
a lot of internal inconsistency and they do crossovers and it's just kind of you have
to forget you kind of have to forget and you kind of have to throw logic out a little bit
when you're enjoying these shows because it's about the feeling it's about the point or
the message of the show or story it's about you know watching the hero overcome it's about
those things more than it's about being logically consistent but it's also partly that way because
over the years Subaraya, Toho, Toei have allowed many different people to be the creative forces
behind the various seasons of the shows or you know installations of the different movies
because I don't know I don't know there's like I feel like there's around 30 Godzilla
movies but I could be wrong and that's just coming out of Japan just despite sorry beside
or aside from how do you say it doesn't matter aside from the late 90s Godzilla and then
the 2010s Godzilla movies that we had and then I don't know if like the is it Raymond
Burr I don't know if the Raymond Burr dub sort of thing from 1954 and 1955 counts as
an American adaptation of it or not but whatever so you know and the same thing Super Sentai
Ichinomori was well Ichinomori died in around the year 2000 I believe or maybe it was 99
and it's been 22 years since then and they've kept making they've kept making Super Sentai
without him and the same thing with Kamen Rider they've kept making it it was actually
on hiatus for a long time and it came back I think a year maybe was two to three years
after his death actually he might have died 97 it doesn't matter at this point it's not
relevant to this discussion is what I mean but anyway these things have lived beyond
their original creators and their original creators you know while they did good work
and may have cared about them in certain ways they didn't always necessarily make things
to be ironclad and have like super clear logic so one thing that I want to do and I'm actually
this is I did not expect to say this I've actually been inspired by the Red Panda which
Red Panda is something done by Greg Taylor g-r-e-g-g Taylor from Dakota Ring Theater
your source for it nevermind anyway he's a Canadian writer and like I don't know play
or like theater dude I don't know what else he does sorry he's written a bunch of books
that I've liked and bought and listened to and enjoyed and he produced a radio show harkening
back to the shadow and I guess what's the other doctor savage or Doc Savage and a bunch
of other things like that from the golden era of radio and he told the story of the
Red Panda which is this mystery man you know fedora and domino mask with a trench coat
superhero in Canada the guy's a super genius so kind of like a Batman who has no superpowers
except for the ability to use hypnosis but anyway he did I think it's about 10 seasons
it's a ton in 20 episodes total of like the main story that goes in chronological order
and then he did books as well and comic books also and so there's the audio drama the radio
show the books and the comic books and across all of them none of the book like there are
things that are mentioned in them it's a transmedia project I guess you could say but anyway
over the over the course of the 120 episodes there's a progression in the Red Panda audio
drama the books take place in between episodes basically and the comic books I think take
place in between other episodes of the audio drama the comic books that is take place within
the audio drama like in between episodes and have nothing to do with the novels or the
pulp novels that Taylor wrote but it's all consistent and it's all planned out and it's
all mapped out very well and while the it's called Red Panda and there's an eponymous
Red Panda character who is the hero of the show or the story he also has the flying squirrel
who is his I guess I don't know partner or sidekick or whatever you want to say I won't
go into spoilers because you should really check out Red Panda because it's an amazing
superhero story it spans decades I'm very inspired by that and I'm very inspired by
that accomplishment and I'm really impressed that this man was able to do this and I want
to go above and beyond and I want to be even better and I want to take the inspiration
from the feat that he accomplished and see how much farther can I go and I basically
I've had ideas for a lot of different stories over the years and recently within the last
year to two years really it's come to mind that I should just put them all into the same
universe I like the tokusatsu elements I love Kamen Rider oh I cannot tell you how much
I love Kamen Rider it's weird like it's almost extreme how much I love Kamen Rider and I'm
like a big Star Wars fan I like Kamen Rider is superior to Star Wars which sounds ridiculous
if you've seen Kamen Rider at a glance that I could say that but it's true it's absolutely
true it's it's undisputable the amount of hours alone of Kamen Rider that's been put
out versus Star Wars that's been put out that has been good trumps that and even Taylor
has an affection for some of Star Wars to a degree I believe because he has little Easter
eggs in there that sound very much like their references to Star Wars like there's a well
there's just like a group of operators doing something in a later season and they call
themselves you know Red 1 Red 2 Red 3 Red 4 Red 5 and things like that so that's really
cool he's from an older generation so I I would bet that he likes the original trilogy
more than the sequels but I actually love the sequel or sorry the original trilogy more
than the prequels and I love the original trilogy I really like the prequels I get well
let's I I love and I think there are better stories overall or better execution of storytelling
being done in the original trilogy but I get I'm a more emotionally attached to the prequel
trilogy and I sometimes my daughter is an aspiring author as well and God bless her
I wish her every success she's actually written a really good children's book or two I feel
like one manuscript is lost but she says it's not but the other one it's it's either 99%
or 90% done or it's 100% done and I think she needs to get it published ASAP but regardless
that's another thing that I'm not gonna go into but the actual the actual I totally lost
my point sorry think about my daughter because she wrote this thing oh I will sometimes help
her with writing issues that she's having because she's still understanding the crafter
writing and I'm not a master by any means but I am working at it and I will use Star
Wars as an example and when I talk about the original trilogy I can pull certain examples
and I can just think about it because I've seen those movies lots of times and it's just
it's like oh this is the fact this is what Luke, Han and Leia are like these are the
dynamics between them this is how they represent different things and they've the theme of
Star Wars is you know selfish selflessness versus selfishness like George Lucas says
it is then you can look at them and you can say oh Leia is a paragon of selflessness and
both Luke and Han move through an arc of selfishness to selflessness through the movie and you
can see it in these places you can see this is where Han is being selfish is where Luke
is being selfish or self-motivated not really thinking about others but thinking about himself
and then these events happen in the story in the narrative the universe punishes him
and causes him to have nothing left over and then ultimately he has his life but he gives
that up for the sake of the rebellion but also giving up his life allows him to tap
into the force because he's doing the ultimate act of selflessness which allows him to save
the day Han has a more minor arc moving into selflessness but it's integral to Luke's
arc because if Han wasn't didn't come back because he moved from a position of selfishness
to selflessness he wouldn't have been able to save Luke from Vader and then Luke would
have been able to make that shot and save everybody and then the story would be over
or whatever I told her all that and it took me a lot longer I truncated down my thoughts
and I went on a bunch of tangents like I do when I talk about story stuff but I was able
to do that without getting emotional like I'm I can feel a little bit of like oh like
that's really cool and it's exciting and it's kind of inspirational but when I talked to
her about like the failed arc of Anakin the failed hero's journey that Anakin has I get
emotional I get misty I get choked up I start to cry a little bit because I feel so deeply
for Anakin as a person and I don't know if it was watching Clone Wars I don't know if
it was just just you know the sequel or the prequel trilogy itself or what but I've always
felt a strong attachment to Anakin and felt very sympathetic towards him and maybe it
was because I was I was like 11 when I watched the movie the Phantom Menace so he's he was
nine so maybe some of that helped me relate to him I love Qui-Gon Jinn Anakin loves Qui-Gon
Jinn I don't really know what it is but I get emotional talking about that and again
I I'm trying to recover and get back to my original original point I think I was gonna
get to the point that as much as I oh there we go I value Star Wars emotionally like I
valued as a story and I value it as something that emotionally touches me I still think
Kamen Rider is better and I think with the hours and hours and hours of content of Kamen
Rider or a TV show that's been on off and on the air for a long time versus Star Wars
alone like it's just Kamen Rider is a better thing it's better done even though it's different
stories told by different authors at different times and it's like they're sort of different
universes but they're not when they need to be in the same universe or crossover they
do it and they just hand wave things away and I don't like that and so like it's interesting
Kamen Rider like I love it more I have more affection for it it's it's better it's like
more consistently entertaining storytelling and there's more there's more of a bulk of
entertaining stories but they're kind of like throwaway where Star Wars is more consistent
with the one author we don't talk about the the Seagull Jolte here the one author of the
six film saga plus the Clone Wars and Rebels or not Rebels well maybe Rebels Rebels is
a wobbler but definitely Clone Wars you throw that in there and it all works as one cohesive
unit but like it's not as good overall even though there was the one sort of vision behind
it Greg Taylor's Red Panda has a much better cohesive universe that ties together better
and I do really really really like Red Panda like I've I've enjoyed listening to it at
least three times if not four times total and that's 120 episodes it like 20 minutes
of pop that's a lot of time I've spent yeah I'm doing it while I'm doing other things
but still that's a lot of time to spend with these stories and these characters and this
one voice of this one author and they're little things little quirks that Taylor has that
show up in Red Panda and show up in Blackjack Justice and show up in other things that he
writes and produces such as that's tough but fair or that's an interesting point but anyway
little little quirks or things that the characters say over and over again that kind of stick
out as like oh that's a signature of Taylor you know which I don't know that's good or
bad but it's just a thing but like I want to go beyond that I want to write a consistent
universe with many characters where it all is logically consistent and where it all works
together and for some reason at least some of the children's picture books that I have
planned like this grow bug series that I want to be inspired by tokusatsu which is like
the Godzilla Ultraman Super Sentai Kamen Rider, Brown Rangers that kind of stuff I want it
to be logically consistent and I want those angelic bug characters the grow bugs to be
from the same benevolent divine force that is empowering the superheroes of the world
and of the universe of the let's just call it holy heroes that's what I'm calling it
for now that's the the code or production name anyway I want them to all be from the
same universe and I want to figure out how to make that all work so the first thing I
need to do is figure out how to unite the entire I guess I just gave you my raison d'etre
for my all my writing projects that are going to go forward in this holy heroes universe
but whatever I think that was unintended but it happened I guess you're getting me out
of the way I should probably produce an episode zero and release that before I release this
episode just to give you a little bit background and warn you about how crazy this first episode
is going to be anyway I just do things as I figure them out I just figure things out
as I'm going along so yeah this is me anyway first of all I need to figure out a way to
put Godzilla Kamen Rider Super Sentai Ultraman all in one universe together interestingly
enough this is something I've been thinking about for a while and Hideaki Anno who's a
producer of Neon Genesis or writer director of or and major creative force behind Neon
Genesis Evangelion as well as some other things you might recognize like the Shin Godzilla
movie the Shin Ultraman movie and coming up the Shin Kamen Rider movie he's doing something
over there and I'm trying to capture that spirit and do something similar with these
characters even though I'm starting from ground zero I'm building the universe as I go along
versus having to do it after the fact like all I like a Smash Brothers or like just like
a team up crossover type thing I want it all to be one consistent universe but you know
that already so I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to make that happen well first of
all I have to think about or what the plan is is I've thought a lot about the heart and
spirit of these different franchises Godzilla Ultraman Kamen Rider Super Sentai and one
other that I'm keeping a secret for later so I'm trying to figure out what they are
and what like the core theme is to at least start my first set of characters who are related
to those things onto those and yes I am doing this for children's picture books and yes
you could accuse me of overthinking things but I think if the themes are solid from the
if the themes if these franchises exist it only exists because people keep buying them
I think people only keep buying them because at the core of it at least the original ones
during the 60s 70s during the 60s and 70s let's call it or 50 60 70s were successful
because something at the theme at the core of it at the heart of it was pure and beautiful
and meaningful to people and then they happen to attach like you know rubber suit monster
wrestling battle royale cage match type stuff on top of it and that just made it it gave
it a cool factor they threw out certain things they might have thrown out the theme and kept
the rule of cool going but it basically made it palatable to people and I want this to
be mass market palatable and have a message inside of it and I think you leaning on these
things that are so good at selling and selling and selling toys and merchandise and whatever
is a good way to do it because I want to tell meaningful stories and I also want people
to care about them on multiple levels and if they just care about it because it looks
cool or it's really it's got a neat gimmick to it that's okay too because I figure if
they like it enough they'll stick around with it long enough that they'll get great meaning
out of it and and I'm okay with that I don't well anyway yeah I'm okay with that so I'm
a capitalist and I want to be an effective marketer so or an effective messenger and
marketer and in order to do that I think you got to sell you got to sell the message you
got to sell the message within the package for people to get it because if you don't
sell to them then they can't get it and if they don't get it then what's the point of
saying the message you may as well just keep silent and say to yourself which is not what
I want to do anyway yeah so I need to figure out a way to make this all consistent I think
it's enough for now to basically have God giving people superpowers in this world but
also and having those people be agents of change and agents of good basically like angels
themselves who are serving God and causing things to be done in such a way to rescue
people and to see that things are done rightly right but also to have these guardian angel
figures and like I'm a believer I study the Bible every day pretty much and that's very
much what my life is about so this is the milieu that's that's where I'm coming from
it's like it's superheroes and monsters and toku and and the Bible like that's that's
all me pretty much wrapped up into one package so like that's what I'm presenting that's
what I'm offering to the world in this universe that I'm building and in this you know these
you know book series that I'm I'm writing and planning and I think it's it's easy to
justify these guardian angel bugs and basically it's just they're you know a firmer or harder
manifestation of angels in the modern world and why aren't they full on angels why are
they little bugs and said that are cute I don't know because because it'll work because
I got to sell it because I want these messages to reach kids and they're not like strictly
biblical messages I'm not indoctrinating you through my you know religious you know
zealotry or whatever it's like the theme of Godzilla is if you fear and hate what you
don't understand and you seek to destroy it instead of understand it so you can live with
it and figure out a mutually beneficial arrangement between the two of you you will sow the seeds
of your own destruction and increase pain and suffering on the world and if you've done
that one time you're likely to do that again and again and again until you've destroyed
all of humanity that's the theme that's the message of Godzilla and that message I want
to pack inside of a children's book and I see no issue with that I think it's a beautiful
theme I think it's very powerful and having children who throw tantrums and get angry
and who you know love rocks and animals and sticks and hate their siblings and their parents
because they slightly offended them is like the perfect vehicle for showing that at least
that's what I think so anyway the idea is like I might have kaiju which are the giant
monsters like Godzilla I might not that's something I'll work towards I don't like the
idea of in Godzilla he's this giant he's 40 stories or 30 stories he's 300 feet through
30 you know that's too huge I might do like you know 50 foot animals or 30 foot animals
like you know Godzilla you know mini kaiju I might do that sort of thing but like I'm
sort of going to be rectifying a lot of issues that I have like oh you know the downtown
gets destroyed in every episode of power rangers or you know super sentai constantly having
monsters you know blowing up half the world or whatever it doesn't get that severe but
it's close common rater I think common rater is a much better job of like containing the
destruction of the evil organizations or the you know villain race or the monsters or whatever
happen to be the problem that a particular common rater is addressing like it's pretty
tight but like Godzilla and the other kaiju movies like they just don't make sense it's
a planetary scale of destruction almost every single time if not like a city on Ultraman
2 they're they're knocking down buildings they're destroying things it doesn't really
make sense so I don't need to keep those elements like I was saying earlier in what I've learned
and this was a conclusion I'd come to before because I'm just not comfortable pushing the
universe in that direction is like I'm going to take the core messages messages of these
things I'm going to shrink the size and scale of the monsters I'm going to make more of
the stakes personal for people and like I'm going to edge into this world with these children's
picture books that deal with little with issues that little kids will have to deal with and
do deal with and like I don't know present that in that way and I even have ideas for
you know with these grow bugs so they're they're insects of some sort right well I also have
this idea for either other planets or other dimensions within my universe that will have
different bugs in them and I have these I have I also created something called dread
bugs and dread bugs attach themselves to people and have a parasitic nature and etc etc and
very much a la common writer I have a pair of characters chirp and duster she's chirp
is based off of a cricket kind of like a grasshopper which is what common writer is and duster is
based off of moth which there's a moth common writer who I have a lot of affection for and
I really like moths and he's a tiger moth she's a whatever kind of cricket they have
adventures but each of them has is like bonded with a dread bug and the dread bug enables
them to tap into this greater power source they're able to transform into these you know
costumed suits or forms or alternate bodies or whatever it is I don't I haven't really
worked that out and they're able to fight off the other dread bugs which is very much
like a common writer I just had a brilliant idea as I was working on these on these grow
bug books that the grow bugs and the dread bugs can either be related to each other or
the existence of one justifies and like anchors the existence of the other and it made me
think oh maybe two of the kids from my books should grow up to become chirp and duster
that could be really interesting because I have a mix of boys and girls in there and
I think that could be fascinating and that's like a trans media thing where I can and then
the other thing is while writing a draft for one of the other grow bug books grow bug book
three I shared it with my wife and she said this is a children's picture book and I said
yeah it is but I've always had this idea of what if you had a board book or a small children's
picture book and it told a story but you could have a chapter book a middle grade chapter
book or you could have something bigger beyond that that expands on that the children's picture
book isn't contained all that story is contained in it but it's expanded upon there are more
details you can go into more depth and it actually linked to another character that
I created I think two years ago maybe it was three years ago by now who I want to be part
of my universe so it's like this ever-expanding universe but I want to figure out a way to
manage it all and I think by putting it all under well anyway I'm putting the building
blocks together in a kind of loose way another thing that Inouye taught me is like if you
don't declare what your rules are and you just play fast and loose with them you can
keep them in the back of your mind or have them written down so you don't violate them
ultimately but if you keep your rules as vague as possible you can do a lot of things and
the audience will go with it because it'll feel right and natural to the story because
you're not blatantly overruling overwriting or overturning any continuity that you've
established so anyway I'm exhausted I'm home I am going to go enjoy the weekend with my
family thank Gd I've made it another week and I'm going to go ahead and get this published
and released pretty soon so I'm going to stop there these are this is intended to be a much
smaller show much less in depth but I guess I just had to put all that out there so I
plan on having next week's be very truncated hopefully well I'm not going to put a time
on it but hopefully it'll all be a lot more succinct and everything I have to say because
I'm very much introducing you to all of the stuff that I'm interested to as a creative
person so anyway this is MJ I leave you with peace and blessings I ask that you check out
the next ones come back for the next one and go to mjmunoz.com to see all my work as it
develops and yeah that's it if I didn't say it already I'm going to say it now I leave
you with peace and blessings I hope you enjoyed that if you did you can find more at mjmunoz.com
as well as my entire library of analysis art and fiction.