1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:06,000 This is MJ Muñoz. You are listening to Story Over Everything, the chronicles of an author, artist, and analyzer. 2 00:00:06,000 --> 00:00:10,000 The date is October 7th, 2022. 3 00:00:10,000 --> 00:00:18,000 Later, I will be brainstorming a creation story for my universe, which is like a combination of the chronicles of Narnia and Marvel Comics. 4 00:00:18,000 --> 00:00:21,000 My prompt is, What was before Dark? 5 00:00:21,000 --> 00:00:23,000 But first, let's track my progress. 6 00:00:23,000 --> 00:00:29,000 Starting off with the work in progress, what is the status of my current projects, progress made, length of time on the back burner, etc. 7 00:00:29,000 --> 00:00:34,000 So, active projects. I've got my five books of the Grow Bug series planned out. 8 00:00:34,000 --> 00:00:38,000 Manuscripts completed. Books one and books two. 9 00:00:38,000 --> 00:00:42,000 Or, books one and two. So that means I have three more to complete. 10 00:00:42,000 --> 00:00:46,000 Drafts completed for three through five. I have zero completed drafts. 11 00:00:46,000 --> 00:00:50,000 Drafts to start, I need to do books three, four, and five. 12 00:00:50,000 --> 00:00:55,000 Outlines started. I sort of have an outline for book three. 13 00:00:55,000 --> 00:00:59,000 It's more of like an outline paragraph written for the book, and I really like it. 14 00:00:59,000 --> 00:01:02,000 And I don't know how it's going to affect four and five, so I think I'm going to finish. 15 00:01:02,000 --> 00:01:08,000 I wanted to do like a macro or like an overall outline for the whole series, but that's just... 16 00:01:08,000 --> 00:01:11,000 I'm going to switch things up and not do it that way. 17 00:01:11,000 --> 00:01:19,000 So, next thing to do is I need to outline or outlines to start our books four and five, because three is basically started. 18 00:01:19,000 --> 00:01:23,000 So I just need to do it all the way through, push it all the way through. 19 00:01:23,000 --> 00:01:32,000 But my next action from September 27th, 2022, was to make text descriptions and thumbnail sketches for all 32 pages. 20 00:01:32,000 --> 00:01:36,000 I did not do that. I did not do that. 21 00:01:36,000 --> 00:01:40,000 Actions taken by 1007282, that was me. 22 00:01:40,000 --> 00:01:47,000 Or, well, I progressed towards the end. I made a copy of the text document and formatted it for the descriptions and sketches. 23 00:01:47,000 --> 00:01:50,000 So that's something. At least the format ends out of the way. 24 00:01:50,000 --> 00:01:57,000 So that's my final excuse when I open up the document again to not just start in on writing those descriptions. 25 00:01:57,000 --> 00:02:01,000 And then eventually after the descriptions are all written, I'll start making the sketches. 26 00:02:01,000 --> 00:02:03,000 That's what I plan to do. 27 00:02:03,000 --> 00:02:09,000 And my next action would be to make descriptions and sketches for Grow Book One, which I... 28 00:02:09,000 --> 00:02:12,000 This is the second week that will be my task. 29 00:02:12,000 --> 00:02:18,000 And then I need to follow up on research crowdfunding, make crowdfunding proposal, 30 00:02:18,000 --> 00:02:22,000 create it for myself and then send that to my artist as well. 31 00:02:22,000 --> 00:02:28,000 Send the sketches and descriptions to the artist and then negotiate rates and terms. 32 00:02:28,000 --> 00:02:33,000 And as far as things that are on the back burner, basically more than milk is on the back burner. It's been for two weeks. 33 00:02:33,000 --> 00:02:35,000 The next action would be to publish... 34 00:02:35,000 --> 00:02:42,000 Well, the next action to publish the book would be to get the text descriptions and thumbnails to the artist for that. 35 00:02:42,000 --> 00:02:46,000 And just keep pushing it along step by step. 36 00:02:46,000 --> 00:02:49,000 And then the fantasy dragon book, it's basically on hold. 37 00:02:49,000 --> 00:02:54,000 So I'm not going to keep a ticker going on that for how long that's been on the back burner because it's not really in the back burner. 38 00:02:54,000 --> 00:02:58,000 It's, I don't know, in the pantry. It's in the shelf. I don't know where it is. 39 00:02:58,000 --> 00:03:04,000 But as far as completed works, I did not get to any writing or drawing this week, creative writing that is, or creative drawing. 40 00:03:04,000 --> 00:03:07,000 I did other drawings, but not creative stuff. 41 00:03:07,000 --> 00:03:14,000 And then lessons learned from the stuff that I wrote, or sorry, from the stuff that I analyzed this week, 42 00:03:14,000 --> 00:03:20,000 because I did analyze Dawn Brothers 31, Futopi 10, and Geats 5, which those are shorthand terms. 43 00:03:20,000 --> 00:03:25,000 If you really want to know, you can look in the show notes and you can see it's Avatar Sentai Dawn Brothers. 44 00:03:25,000 --> 00:03:30,000 Futopi is the whole title, but then the common writer, Geats. These are Japanese shows. Two are tokusatsu, one is anime. 45 00:03:30,000 --> 00:03:34,000 I'm not going to go over what those are again. You can click on them and find out. 46 00:03:34,000 --> 00:03:43,000 In my watching and analyzing of these shows, I went ahead and made segments of what I've learned 47 00:03:43,000 --> 00:03:51,000 to include here in this episode. So I'm learning to leverage content I made in one place that can be reused for another place. 48 00:03:51,000 --> 00:03:56,000 So I'm going to go ahead and be quiet for a little bit and drop in my audio recordings, 49 00:03:56,000 --> 00:04:01,000 and then I will come back on the other side and we'll get into the next segment. 50 00:04:01,000 --> 00:04:08,000 For Dawn Brothers Episode 31, this is my lessons learned section. 51 00:04:08,000 --> 00:04:13,000 I need to learn to be a funny writer. It seems like Inoue treats writing like a game in some ways. 52 00:04:13,000 --> 00:04:18,000 He plays with the structure of the show, the characters, and the situations in such a way that it is entertaining, 53 00:04:18,000 --> 00:04:24,000 even when it isn't serious or important. The fact is, this is fiction, and while stories matter, 54 00:04:24,000 --> 00:04:27,000 the only ones that count are the ones that stick with you. 55 00:04:27,000 --> 00:04:33,000 I think all the fun I have had with Dawn Brothers will cause it to stick in my mind for a long time. 56 00:04:33,000 --> 00:04:38,000 From Futopi Episode 10, what lessons did I learn? 57 00:04:38,000 --> 00:04:42,000 It doesn't matter that not everyone will like everything in your story. 58 00:04:42,000 --> 00:04:48,000 There are some things that people will just roll with. This is me rolling with the ridiculous Brachiosaurus. 59 00:04:48,000 --> 00:04:52,000 I do not like it one bit, but I am rolling with it. A much larger audience is too. 60 00:04:52,000 --> 00:04:57,000 The manga is still ongoing and I am actively enjoying the anime adaptation of Futopi. 61 00:04:57,000 --> 00:05:03,000 Be wary of making a cast so big and a scope so small that people get shoved aside. 62 00:04:57,000 --> 00:05:04,000 Still, I will not argue with the success. And I wonder, is it artistic integrity to do something you want to do as the author 63 00:05:03,000 --> 00:05:08,000 I know that I am not the only one who is concerned about that. 64 00:05:04,000 --> 00:05:10,000 even if the audience will think it is dumb? Maybe. It is definitely gutsy, and I do admire that. 65 00:05:08,000 --> 00:05:13,000 I am concerned about the fact that people will think that I am a dumb person. 66 00:05:10,000 --> 00:05:17,000 In other words, be bold and make choices you like even if some of your audience will balk at them. 67 00:05:13,000 --> 00:05:17,000 I am concerned about the fact that I am a dumb person. 68 00:05:17,000 --> 00:05:22,000 I am concerned about the fact that I am a dumb person. 69 00:05:22,000 --> 00:05:27,000 Be wary of making a cast so big and a scope so small that people get shoved aside. 70 00:05:27,000 --> 00:05:31,000 I suppose the real lesson is making sure your cast and setting match each other well. 71 00:05:31,000 --> 00:05:36,000 My main problem is that I feel like a lot was left out of this episode. 72 00:05:36,000 --> 00:05:39,000 What could have been done differently to make it work better? 73 00:05:39,000 --> 00:05:44,000 The format of the show is to move briskly, endear the heroes to the audience, and introduce cool toys. 74 00:05:44,000 --> 00:05:51,000 The game that was the setting of this story and single episode could have been made into an arc of a few episodes. 75 00:05:51,000 --> 00:05:55,000 We could have spent time with each team figuring out the game. 76 00:05:55,000 --> 00:05:57,000 In a book, that would be no issue. 77 00:05:57,000 --> 00:06:04,000 You take the time, you have more chapters, the final page or word count matters less than the restrictions of a 22 minute show of around 50 episodes. 78 00:06:04,000 --> 00:06:06,000 Still, I could have... 79 00:06:06,000 --> 00:06:07,000 Whoa. 80 00:06:07,000 --> 00:06:11,000 Still, it could have been done. I was not saying I could have done it better, but still, it could have been done better. 81 00:06:11,000 --> 00:06:17,000 To put it simply, the author is in control and can right-size the elements so they all flow well. 82 00:06:17,000 --> 00:06:21,000 We have to make choices and stick to them, even if it is hard. 83 00:06:23,000 --> 00:06:25,000 Alright, so like I said, that's what I learned. 84 00:06:25,000 --> 00:06:28,000 And now moving on into the Fabula Ex Machina section. 85 00:06:28,000 --> 00:06:35,000 My prompt is to make a creation story for my superhero universe and to approach it with the question, what was before Dark? 86 00:06:35,000 --> 00:06:41,000 And I'm going to give myself about five more minutes on this to kind of spitball. 87 00:06:41,000 --> 00:06:47,000 And then I'll give myself five minutes of trying to make this happen and we'll see what happens. 88 00:06:47,000 --> 00:06:50,000 I'll probably write it down later after and I'll just release the audio. 89 00:06:50,000 --> 00:06:54,000 And then during the week, I'll listen back to it and write down some incoherent and coherent from the brainstorm. 90 00:06:54,000 --> 00:06:57,000 I think doing it like that makes a lot more sense. 91 00:06:57,000 --> 00:06:59,000 So here we go. 92 00:06:59,000 --> 00:07:03,000 First of all, why am I asking what came before the dark? 93 00:07:03,000 --> 00:07:10,000 Because in my understanding of the biblical narrative, there was darkness first and then light was withdrawn from darkness. 94 00:07:10,000 --> 00:07:19,000 And I don't know if there's like a linguistic link to that, but or would be light and Hosek is darkness. 95 00:07:19,000 --> 00:07:25,000 And it's interesting because like Hodesh is new. 96 00:07:25,000 --> 00:07:32,000 So I don't know if there's a link between Hodesh and Hosek at all. 97 00:07:32,000 --> 00:07:42,000 But anyway, it is interesting that the narrative, the biblical narrative starts off with darkness is the first thing and then God brings light into that. 98 00:07:42,000 --> 00:07:51,000 And yeah, I'm very much playing with the idea of my the God in my universe instead of being a heavenly father, being a heavenly mother. 99 00:07:51,000 --> 00:07:54,000 I think that could be a lot of fun. I think it'd be a neat little twist on things. 100 00:07:54,000 --> 00:08:03,000 I'm keeping things fairly traditional and like I don't really plan on quoting biblical texts in in any of the stories that I do. 101 00:08:03,000 --> 00:08:09,000 But like with this creation story, I would end up doing something like paraphrasing. 102 00:08:09,000 --> 00:08:15,000 I guess you could say I'm kind of writing, rewriting Genesis in, you know, for this story universe. 103 00:08:15,000 --> 00:08:18,000 But yeah, I think that's what I'm doing. So we'll see. 104 00:08:18,000 --> 00:08:28,000 I think it could be kind of fun to make God a woman or heavenly mother instead of heavenly father, because, you know, if you understand theology properly, at least. 105 00:08:28,000 --> 00:08:36,000 Yeah, I think if you understand theology properly, there's no issue with the spirit being manifest in either way. 106 00:08:36,000 --> 00:08:44,000 And there are masculine and feminine traits to God, even from the Hebrew, the like the shekinah, as some people call it, the shekinah. 107 00:08:44,000 --> 00:08:56,000 It has it has a feminine, it has feminine attributes and the words used to describe it are feminine because Hebrew is a gendered language. 108 00:08:56,000 --> 00:09:00,000 And there's nothing wrong with it. There's nothing weird about that. It's just it is what it is. 109 00:09:00,000 --> 00:09:08,000 So anyway, yeah. What came before the darkness? What was before dark? 110 00:09:08,000 --> 00:09:20,000 I kind of want to say that. 111 00:09:20,000 --> 00:09:27,000 Before light. 112 00:09:27,000 --> 00:09:35,000 Was pulled out of darkness. 113 00:09:35,000 --> 00:09:42,000 Now, this is making me get all not metaphysical, but like into thinking about physics. 114 00:09:42,000 --> 00:09:55,000 The fact that light is a wave and a particle and it's a form of energy and matter doesn't need to have light to operate. 115 00:09:55,000 --> 00:10:08,000 Technically, you have matter and energy and light is like an energy and matter is, you know, physical force or not a physical force, but a physical entity. 116 00:10:08,000 --> 00:10:20,000 And I believe the theory on this is correct. And it's the theory behind like, you know, cold vision, I think is what they call it, where you can convert matter into energy. 117 00:10:20,000 --> 00:10:34,000 So there's like a if you had the proper machine, you could turn a small amount of matter, a very small amount of lead or clay or dirt or rock or whatever, into a ton of energy if you had the proper mechanism to do it. 118 00:10:34,000 --> 00:10:41,000 And that's because matter and energy are different classes of substances or whatever. 119 00:10:41,000 --> 00:10:55,000 And you can't destroy them or create them within our closed universe. And you can only rearrange them and the energy can be transmitted into matter and have an effect on it. 120 00:10:55,000 --> 00:11:00,000 And matter can be acted upon by energy and have an effect. 121 00:11:00,000 --> 00:11:04,000 I don't know. I don't know quite how to say that. 122 00:11:04,000 --> 00:11:11,000 But like if you have a piece of wood and you burn it with fire, which first of all, what is fire and where is fire come from? I don't know. It blows my mind. 123 00:11:11,000 --> 00:11:21,000 But then the all that's left is ash because as the heat as the fire works through it, it breaks down the physical matter. 124 00:11:21,000 --> 00:11:25,000 But that matter is not destroyed. It's broken down into the ash that's remaining there. 125 00:11:25,000 --> 00:11:34,000 And it also turns into the smoke and the vapor and the soot or not the soot, but the what do you call those things like the embers and things like that. That all burns off. 126 00:11:34,000 --> 00:11:42,000 So you're transforming the matter by application of energy, which is, you know, it's the wood and the heat or the fire. 127 00:11:42,000 --> 00:11:51,000 And that's really curious to me. So I wonder if maybe going back to the, you know, what it says in Genesis, if the idea is that light or energy was converted out of matter. 128 00:11:51,000 --> 00:11:56,000 And that's God created matter. And I'm talking about like, you know, the God of the Bible. 129 00:11:56,000 --> 00:12:15,000 But to go into the God of my universe, I think why I have the question and the prompt being related to why was there darkness first or what came before the dark is because I want to emphasize the fact that 130 00:12:15,000 --> 00:12:26,000 the darkness and emptiness of whatever the world, the planet or the universe or whatever it was, was God was created. God or not God was created. God was in existence. God. 131 00:12:26,000 --> 00:12:29,000 Gosh, this is so hard. 132 00:12:29,000 --> 00:12:36,000 Especially because I'm trying to sort out like my theology and thoughts that I have about God from how I want to write this. 133 00:12:36,000 --> 00:12:48,000 Maybe I need to define my terms first. God exists outside of time and space and time and space, time, space. 134 00:12:48,000 --> 00:12:58,000 What's the third element? Space, time and matter. Space is matter. Space is matter spread out. 135 00:12:58,000 --> 00:13:09,000 Well, I promise I'm not high right now. This is just me thinking about things, think about the way the universe works. 136 00:13:09,000 --> 00:13:13,000 So there's a really cool insight to from the Torah scroll. It starts. 137 00:13:13,000 --> 00:13:18,000 It's the Torah. The first word is Bereshit. And Bereshit means well, it means a lot of things. 138 00:13:18,000 --> 00:13:24,000 But the important part is the first letter is a bait and the bait is closed on three sides and open on one side. 139 00:13:24,000 --> 00:13:31,000 And an idea shared about that is that nobody can know or nobody in this world knows what came before the beginning. 140 00:13:31,000 --> 00:13:40,000 And that's because the way the Hebrew reads that open space, it's closed and boxed in on the other sides. 141 00:13:40,000 --> 00:13:48,000 And you have to read facing away from that. So it's like that open space is an opening that dumps you into this world basically and puts you into the respective of this world. 142 00:13:48,000 --> 00:13:53,000 And that's all you get to see. You don't get to see what's before because it's closed off to you, which I think is pretty cool. 143 00:13:53,000 --> 00:14:05,000 Anyway, I'm thinking there's this concept that, you know, God cannot be contained by the universe because the universe, all matter in space and time, matter, space time. 144 00:14:05,000 --> 00:14:10,000 Does that make sense? Anyway, exists within God. But God is a spirit. 145 00:14:10,000 --> 00:14:27,000 So how can this spirit have physicality or, you know, matter within it? But there must be some way, right? 146 00:14:27,000 --> 00:14:56,000 Before the dark, there was a queen with no people, a mother with no child. 147 00:14:56,000 --> 00:15:13,000 A one without another. She was alone. 148 00:15:13,000 --> 00:15:38,000 And in her solitude, she opened a void. And the void was filled with darkness and the darkness with potential. 149 00:15:38,000 --> 00:16:07,000 To the darkness, she turned her mind and filled it with every dream, every possibility, every joy, every sorrow, every nightmare. 150 00:16:07,000 --> 00:16:12,000 Joy and sorrow. 151 00:16:12,000 --> 00:16:16,000 Victory and defeat. 152 00:16:16,000 --> 00:16:19,000 Comfort and pain. 153 00:16:19,000 --> 00:16:24,000 All in unity. 154 00:16:24,000 --> 00:16:33,000 Tears filled the darkness. 155 00:16:33,000 --> 00:16:44,000 And the queen removed her crown and started to speak. 156 00:16:44,000 --> 00:16:49,000 Okay, so I went back and I made the notes already, so I'm just going to include it right away. 157 00:16:49,000 --> 00:16:58,000 Before the Dark was written on October 9, 2022. It's 89 words long. It took me about five minutes, sort of, once I started actively just writing it. 158 00:16:58,000 --> 00:17:03,000 And here it goes. 159 00:17:28,000 --> 00:17:32,000 Comfort and pain. All in unity. 160 00:17:32,000 --> 00:17:38,000 Tears filled the darkness and the queen removed her crown and started to speak. 161 00:17:38,000 --> 00:17:42,000 It's time for me to get out of here. This is MJ. I leave you with peace and blessings. 162 00:17:42,000 --> 00:17:50,000 I'm signing off and I ask you to go over to MJMunoz.com and check out all my work, my analysis, art and fiction. 163 00:17:50,000 --> 00:18:01,000 And yeah, I would appreciate it if you would check that out and see all the stuff I'm working on and keep up with the progress I make. 164 00:18:01,000 --> 00:18:08,000 I will continue to release story over everything and share my progress with you. 165 00:18:08,000 --> 00:18:22,000 I'm really hoping and praying that doing this is going to spur me on to be a more committed, more powerful, I guess, more profound, no, no, no, profound, prolific creator. 166 00:18:22,000 --> 00:18:24,000 And yeah, I'm really hoping that. 167 00:18:24,000 --> 00:18:28,000 Actually, a friend recommended me a book about alter egos. 168 00:18:28,000 --> 00:18:34,000 And I'm kind of thinking my alter ego is Star Ishina Mori because, and I'll talk more about him later, 169 00:18:34,000 --> 00:18:41,000 but I heard about a certain moniker he was given or title he was given and I thought, I like that title. 170 00:18:41,000 --> 00:18:45,000 I kind of want to be that for books. And I've mentioned that before in passing over the years. 171 00:18:45,000 --> 00:18:52,000 But maybe Ishinomori is my alter ego that I want to assume for when I'm delving into these creative works like this. 172 00:18:52,000 --> 00:18:58,000 So anyway, maybe I'll share about that because that's something not specifically from the world of storytelling, 173 00:18:58,000 --> 00:19:06,000 but it is something related to creative work that could be useful or beneficial. So anyway, again, this is MJ signing off. 174 00:19:06,000 --> 00:19:29,000 I leave you with peace and blessings.