This is MJ Munoz. You are listening to Story Over Everything, the chronicles of an author, artist, and analyzer.
You can find all my work at MJMunoz.com.
This session I am going to be working on the prompt, Can I Ride a Series by Bullet Points?
And this is a continuation of the last episode where I struggled mightily to come up with a story of a sympathetic hunter.
And the truth is I do have a sympathetic hunter, or yes,
I do have a protagonist who is a hunter who you're supposed to feel sympathetic for, and I have an arc for this character overall, or for this character.
I'm going to say model, or archetype, or lineage, let's say that, throughout this superhero universe I'm creating.
And I'm definitely, you know, I personally don't hunt right now, but if I had to defeat my family I would.
But I think sport hunting is a little interesting.
And, you know, but if you want to do it, you know, you're free to.
It's just, it's interesting and most people don't like it, or many popular people.
The Vox Popula, and by that I mean not the voice of the people, but the popular idea out there in society pushed by whoever it's pushed by,
is that hunting makes you bad and evil, and I don't agree with that.
I think there's definitely a place for it, and that's a little bit of what I'm going to explore with this hunter idea.
But I am straying very far from the format, which is to start off first of all by telling you all about,
well I already told you about the prompt I'm going to be working on, which is actually this, planning the whole series in bullet points.
I don't know how many books we're going to go for, but we're at least going to start with one and then expand from there.
But anyway, I'm supposed to tell you my work in progress and my status on all of my current books.
So, Grow Bug, the Grow Bug series, I have, well anyway, you can look at the finer details, but basically this is my forward progress.
I'm not going to tell you all the things that I'm failing to do or not moving forward on at the moment.
So, here we go. I have, I was supposed to have finished the remaining spreads doing thumbnail sketches for them for my artist.
That would be spread 7 through 16, and I failed to meet that target. I was able to, so yeah, back on the 28th I had assigned myself,
because I hadn't finished it yet, to do spread 7 through 16. I didn't get that. I'm three weeks late on having my thumbnails ready.
So, that's not great. I hope that as I continue to work on this and work at this, this is my sixth week really seriously taking time every single week
to reflect on what I'm doing and make sure I'm moving the ball down the court, so to speak.
I'm hoping that, you know, within a couple of weeks, a couple more weeks or at least a couple months after I'm done,
or the first two to three months of doing this, I will have a much more finely honed discipline that'll, or diligence that'll push me to get things done in a more timely manner.
But anyway, that's neither here nor there. However, that is a goal of this project. But I'm still behind. I will be four weeks late next week, so one whole month late.
I did, however, do spread 7 through 14, so pretty good. 15 and 16, it was like walls of text I was looking at, because they're very long pages, very wordy pages,
and I don't quite know what to draw for them, and I was kind of pressed for time, so I said, you know what, I'll do those next week, I guess.
Especially because I want to get this out on Friday. Well, I want to finish recording it 100% on Friday and then get it published Saturday night after darkness falls.
So anyway, that's what I've done this week. For next week, which will be, which will be, oh, you know, I don't have the date, but for the next week, which is going to be 11-11, oh, interesting date.
For 11-11, I want to have finished spreads 15 and 16, and, and, because that's not that much work to do, I want to get photographs taken, or do scans, or something like that, one or the other, really,
to create a reference package or document to send to an artist. So ideally what I'd like to do is format it so that the messy thumbnail shows up, as well, maybe I'll do small text, I don't know,
as well as the, like, in an area on a page, I'll have my artwork, and I'll have the descriptions and the text for that one page, and maybe I'll do page by page, and for the double page spreads, maybe I'll just keep it,
I don't know what I'll do for that. Maybe it'll have to be two pages of the artist we'll have to put together, if not one single page that the stuff is grouped on. So we'll see how I do that.
But because I'm only doing the two spreads, I think that's not enough work to do, I need, and the other work needs to get done anyway, so I may as well schedule for myself to do that as well.
And I do secretly have my daughters working on the breastfeeding book, and, which is very appropriate, because she started us on this whole breastfeeding journey as a, as a baby, as a wee baron.
So she's working on the artwork for that, which is really neat. So I'm hoping a kitschy, fun idea will be that the breastfeeding book was written for a breastfeeding mother by her husband who supported her in it,
and our daughter who was breastfed for as long as she was, is the one who's going to do the work for her. I think that's a cool story of the book, and I think the book is going to be good on its own.
I like my daughter's art, partly because I'm her father and partly because I think it's good, and I like my words because they got kicked around a lot.
So there was a lot of editing, and it's probably my third draft of the book actually that I'm publishing, or that I'm, you know, yes, that I am publishing.
But anyway, that's going on in the background. Technically, it's, you know, on the back burner, whereas like the Dragon book is just on hold and I'm not getting to that one yet.
So anyway, I'm going to move on from there, talk about my completed works. Other than this work for, you know, for moving the progress forward here, for story over everything, I did no writing and no drawing.
I'm not going to count my thumbnail sketches, and I don't think I'm even going to count my brainstorm session thing that I'm doing here. It's just a different animal.
It doesn't count. I still want to be doing regular writing, you know, once a week or, you know, an hour a week or whatever it is.
You know, an hour a day would be ideal, but I just, there's not enough time in the day for that, and I need to structure the way I'm doing things a little differently because it's, I'm doing a lot of analyzing and not a lot of my own individual creative writing.
And I think I need to flip the script and make more money on the, now on, well, I need to make more money to free up more time for myself eventually, but I've just, I've committed to do certain things to myself, bleed nether.
And I'm going to see those things through probably before I change up the formula. But I'm thinking in the background of how I got to change things to make it more manageable for me until I turn this into an endeavor that really is bringing something in for me to compensate me for the time I put.
So anyway, we'll discuss that more later in the future. But yeah, so no independent, no separate writing or drawing for this or, you know, besides this.
Although I did document my thumbnail recording session, so I might do something with that, turn that into a piece of content, but we'll see about that.
Maybe I'll save that for behind the scenes type stuff. But yeah, so I did analyze Combinator Black Sun episode 1, which you can find out more about that later.
Avatar Ascent to Dombrothers episode 35 and Combinator Geets episode 9. So that is stuff I got done. Clips for two out of three of those will be included in the lessons learned section coming up next.
And I'll actually just go and talk to myself there. And yeah, I'll just tell you now, I did not have anything for Geets episode 9. I'm not sure why, but I didn't. And that's just how it is.
My lessons learned from Combinator Black Sun episode 1 are this, or my lesson learned is this. Sympathy for a character can let them get away with a lot.
I feel so badly for what was done to Nobuhiko and Kotaro, and they both feel like victims that I am willing to overlook some of what they are doing.
It helps that I don't know, or that I know I don't know all the facts, but they could turn out to be really bad people. But I'm still willing to assume the best of them.
So, to put it in a bullet point, this lesson learned is wound your protagonist at go to garner sympathy and support from the audience.
They will want to see him win, even if he has an ugly side.
Okay, so I'm going to jump right into Fabula Ex Machina. Let's see, on my recorder I'm showing 8 minutes 30 seconds. So, at 18 minutes 30 seconds I will stop myself from working on this prompt to plan out this series.
And I'm going to just throw stuff out here now, and then I will go back and make the actual bullet points at some point, which is why I have, you'll see if you look at the show notes,
transcription pending is in square brackets under the post, or under the Fabula Ex Machina section. So, anyway, here we go.
So, I have this Holy Heroes universe idea for a hunter. I'll go ahead and...
I don't know what that was. But, yeah, I'll do a little storytelling first, and then I'll sum up, and then I'll get into the actual thing. The actual exercise. So, here we go.
And actually, I'm going to push myself. I'll give myself another minute or two to tell the story, and then I'll start my 10 minute clock there. Because I still have, I don't know, 20 minutes to get home or so.
So, anyway, here we go. So, I originally had planned on, well, I'd originally, I like comic books, and these superhero stories in the Holy Heroes universe are very much inspired by comic books.
And it struck me as interesting that you will have different versions of characters. And this started all the way back from when I had, I think, action figures.
Some of the cool Marvel action figures from the 90s with like the superposable Spider-Man with 32 points of articulation. Which if you don't have a Spider-Man toy like that, why buy?
And actually, I kind of think that the reason I got more into Marvel than DC is one, the Spider-Man and X-Men and Fantastic Four and Iron Man and Hulk cartoons.
Okay, there was a lot of cartoons, honestly. Were really, really cool. And while I liked Batman the Animated Series, and Superman was okay, and Batman Beyond was amazing.
All of the DC action figures have a neck that swivels, shoulders, and maybe hip joints. That's it. So, your arms go up and down, your legs go up and down, so you can have your guys sit and like reach out or do a, what's the exercise?
Like V-ups. They can do V-ups, sort of, maybe, and turn their heads. And that's it. Versus, you got 32 points of articulation Spider-Man so you can get in all his freakish, spider-like poses. That's amazing.
Why wouldn't you want that in your toy? You got a giant Ben Grimm figure that has decent amount of articulation, maybe like 16 points, somewhere around there, so he can move around a lot.
I mean, I never got a Mr. Fan. I don't know why I had Ben Grimm and not like anybody else, but I always liked Ben Grimm from looking at my dad's old comics.
Anyway, so, yeah, definitely was into that, but I did notice, I think, on some of the toys, or maybe it was on the Marvel card collection thing, because I had a bunch of the trading cards for some reason, which was very nice of somebody to get them for me, but I don't know why they were getting them for me, but whatever. I'm appreciative of it.
But I noticed they would have, you know, so-and-so, and then like the number two next to the name, like Green Goblin, no, Green Goblin 2, Hobgoblin 2, Hobgoblin 3. Why are there so many of these guys? Why are these different characters assuming the identity of this established character?
That's interesting. I just found out about Hobgoblin, voiced by Mark Hamill, you know, in the cartoon. It's amazing. It's super cool. I like this guy. He's like kind of a scarier, crazier version of Green Goblin, even though Green Goblin is, you know, scary unto himself, but this guy's just like crazy, power-hungry, greedy, vicious dude, whereas, you know, Norman's, well, he's just nuts.
Anyway, I got into, you know, I learned about, you know, mantles and characters, you know, costumes and identities of different superheroes or even supervillains being assumed by multiple people over time, and I found that to be a really interesting idea.
And then Captain America, you know, years and years go by, Captain America comes out, there's the, in their first Captain America movie, and I think it's in Avengers 2, he has the classic costume, right? I mean, he has the fake, goofy costume for when he's doing the propaganda films and the stage shows and stuff, and then he gets like an actual costume, you could say, in that movie, and then by, you know, Winter Soldier, he's got that amazing costume, the modern one, and it just struck me that, oh, that's interesting. You have modern Captain America, you've got, you know, modern armor-plated bats,
Batman versus like just the spandex or the fabric costumes that these guys have as well, and I found that really interesting from a character design standpoint because I enjoy drawing superhero characters and designing them in their costumes and thinking about the practicalities of them and different things like that, and that all kind of fused together.
The mantel stuff and the different characters or different interpretations of characters throughout time kind of dawned on me, and I thought, I want to make a knockoff Captain America combined with a Kamen Rider, which I've mentioned Kamen Rider already in this, so you may or may not know what that is, but basically, Karate Bugman, super soldier type thing, except he was an evil super soldier whose brain was saved from him being, his brain was the last thing to change or to alter in his body because he was a cyborg, and then he would have been a villain, but his brain was saved, therefore his, like, human
heart and soul were saved basically, and then he became a warrior of justice, and he defended the innocent against, you know, these terrible, you know, Neo-Nazi Japanese people who were trying to take over the world. He was a Japanese man himself.
So anyway, I got this notion. What if I made a golden age superhero who was turned into a, who was picked back up and turned into a silver age superhero, then a bronze age superhero, and then a 90s extreme totally rad to the max superhero.
I'll make it, you know, Kamen Rider's a bug, I'll make this a bird, and I'll make them all have a similar power source, which is like this gem that absorbs light, and somehow, like, absorbing light turns it into, like, gravitational energy or something like that.
That was the basic premise for trying to find this bird character I have, and I actually was going to have it be one character with many permutations throughout time, and then I split it off and said, no, these are four different characters in four different eras, and that's how they exist now in this Holy Heroes universe, which spans about a century of history.
And, which, you're getting some deep insights into the Holy Heroes universe right now, so if, you know, God willing, this becomes a success, you'll have the inside track to, and, you know, some insights into it starting right now, so listen up.
But anyway, I wanted one to be, I wanted them all to be birds. I originally think I wanted them all to be eagles, but I eventually made the classic, like, golden age guy, he's an American war hero type guy, like, you know, like Captain America, and he's such a bomb suit.
It was yellow, I think. Yellow with purple, I believe.
Anyway, I'll put, maybe I'll put up the design in the show notes, or in the, on the video version, because I can do that, because I'm the master of things here. Anyway, it was, he had, if you've ever seen Castle in the Sky, the Dola Gang, they wear these goggles that are, that basically have like a beak nose type thing on them, which looks really cool.
So I took that, I gave him metal, super simple suit, like a Union suit, one piece, you know, flight jacket-y type, or flight suit type thing, with like silver gauntlets on him, feathers that come out, and he can throw like ninja star type stuff, like, you know, like Mark from Gatchaman, or Battle of the Planets, rather.
And for some reason, I really like harness-y type things, like what you would wear if you were going to be on wires in like, I don't know, like a Kung Fu movie with wires, you know, wire fu. Anyway, I like that kind of stuff, which is actually kind of reminiscent of if you've ever seen Attack on Titan, the gear that those, the, what is it, the Survey Corps wears?
Anyway, kind of similar to that. So I'll put a picture of it so you can see it, but anyway, super cool. I imagine him being like up on planes, and then he would like jump over to enemy planes. He'd be like soaring on, with solar energy or grab, anti-grav stuff, and he'd like destroy, he'd like infiltrate and destroy enemy ships and stuff.
And that's how he would save, you know, our boys fighting and wherever. So anyway, that was really cool, and then I made, so it was an eagle, then the modern day was going to be the skater girl who's like kind of leading a punk rebellion, rebellion type thing. She's like a modern Robin Hood, but she's like a pigeon, and she wears a hood, and she's a skater, I already said she's a skater girl.
And like, you know, in this really nasty town with a terrible oppressive government that's like just hurting the poor, and you know, she's a champion for the little guy. And anyway, that lady, I hope I didn't say her name already, but if I did, I'm going to let it, I'm going to ignore it, except for I just lamp shaded it.
And then the other permutations were going to be, so we got the eagle, the pigeon, oh, red tail. I just named him, whoops. So there was this hot guy who's like a modern military vet. He was in whatever branch of the service, and this is all changing now because I decided that with this Holy Heroes thing, it's going to, like, at 1901, the history of the world is going to shift into being my universe. So everything will pretty much be the same up until that point.
But anyway, he uses the same thing. He flies on these, like, rainbow wings, basically. That's not an LGBT thing, it's just, I love the idea of bending light, and it would have to be, if you're bending light, you're going to create a rainbow out of that, I think, and he'll have these rainbow wings that he flies on, or these, like, wings of light, and he can, like, shoot laser blasts and stuff.
So I'm like, super cool. Anyway, all about bending and manipulating light. And I thought, what's the opposite? Like, what else can you do with light? Oh, you can do shadows. So I have this owl guy who is able to control shadows, able to manipulate shadows, and he can, like, cloak himself in darkness and, you know, shoot out little, you know, shadow projectiles or whatever. You know, it's comic books. So I'm doing that kind of stuff.
And it occurred to me to give him an owl design that was based on something in the real world, so I found an older culture that does hunting, and all these heroes are, most of these heroes are not, or, I don't know, maybe about half of the characters are created in the US and half are abroad, approximately. So it's an international crew.
So he's in a country where they hunt to survive and they live interesting nomadic lives and things like that, and he has this kind of ethnic armor that has, you know, it's pulled from his culture, but it has this owl motif and design added on there, and he does his stuff in the shadows.
So that's a little bit of background on that guy. So basically, he is a hunter. This guy is in old times. He's in, I don't know, the 1910s or maybe 1920s. I'm not 100% sure yet what era he's going to, I mean, I'm not sure on the exact decade, but he's somewhere in that area.
So he's in the first era of these stories, and he is a hunter, and the idea, I guess I'll just give spoilers for the whole dang thing. The idea, no, I'm not going to do that. The idea is that he's hunting these animals from another world, and because of the time and place that he finds himself in, and, you know, the culture of you hunt, you kill, you eat, because you have to do that to survive, at least the first book is going to be a little rough, and I have plans for how things can change for the character and for the characters who get this mantle passed on to them.
Because there will be that happening, but it's more of a lineage. So it's the same name, the same relative role, but it will change, and it will transform over time as I feel is appropriate. Not that the character won't, I'm not going to say the character won't be hunting in the future, but it'll be different.
I'll have a different context to it a little bit, but still, you know, basic survival needs are important. So anyway, here we go. The idea is that the arc of the character through time is going to be that they go from a hunter to a tamer to sort of a conservationist and game warden, and then finally to a wizard.
I'm not sure why I jump from those things to a wizard, but I do, and that's just how things are going to go. But anyway, within the arc of this hunter, and I don't know how many stories, I had originally planned on doing 12 stories. These are pulp novels, so I don't know, 50,000 words I think is appropriate for a pulp novel.
But you know, tell one juicy story with each one and have a great high adventure. But for the first one, I think the guy is starving. He and his family are low on provisions for whatever reason. For natural reasons, it was a bad year, so they're low on reserves. He's out on his own. He's been married to his wife for a couple years, and they're living out where they're living, kind of separated from her family and his family.
Not like imperialistically expanding their territory, but just like, hey, you have your own family, you can go off now farther and settle here, and that's how the culture is. Everybody kind of goes off a little distance from where they grew up, and they settle, and they take more of the land.
It's not that they're, well, they're kind of nomadic. So it's like, you know, we're settling and spreading these areas as time goes on, and you know, they're kind of, they get, areas get neglected and are rough and they're undiscovered because as the nomadic people trek through, they have kind of common byways and highways that they use, but then again, things fall out of use for different reasons, and I want this guy to kind of be in a weird area because I want there to be a key to another world, or an opening to another world.
That opens for whatever reason at whatever time, I'm not 100% sure, but the idea is that he and his family have been having a hard year, or a hard couple years, and he's out on his own, you know, younger hunter, providing for his family and shepherding a flock or whatever if that is necessary as well or if that's appropriate as well.
I'll have to do a little bit of research for that. But it's been lean, and it's especially lean, and things are getting critical because a great creature has come from across, has crossed through this veil into the other world, and they are an invasive species slash super predator because of the particular cunning that these creatures have.
And there's no natural predator for it, so it's able to dominate and take over the ecosystem basically, and it massacres people's, or massacres the animals that are naturally there, that are endemic there, or well I don't know if it's endemic or just the ones that happen to be living there at the time.
And it's basically wreaking havoc and it's like messing things up. So basically at the end of this book, this guy is going to be a heroic hunter, the first book anyway, because he kills this great beast.
Now, that's basically what I want to have for the end of the story, but I don't know if that's sufficient.
And I've already done this with one character, my Noar Angel character, and I planned out a 12 book series for her.
And I think I really like what I did. Her emotional arc in book one is the same as her emotional arc in book 12, but she's in a completely different station in life, and she's gone through all these different things.
And at the end she comes to terms with the same issue or topic in a different way, and it sees her to the end of her journey essentially.
So, I like that idea, and I like the idea. Of course I've never planned out a series, and I didn't finish the Harry Potter series.
The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings is really just one book, so I don't feel like that's fair.
So I'm a little short on series that have a beginning, middle, and end over a course or whatever.
But I've looked into it, and I've done research on it, and it seems like you want that theme to be echoed. You want that theme in the first book and the last book and for the emotional arc to be repeated basically to enforce who the character is.
And if you want a series, you have to mix it up. And in between the first and last book, whether that be the fourth book, the seventh book, or the thirtieth book, you need to have other things happen to the character and other emotional arcs and journeys that they go on.
And you might be wondering what kind of emotional arc a hunter can go on. And that's something I'm wondering too for myself.
So basically, he slays this great beast, and he's a hero for that in kind of the more traditional, not nomadic people, but tribal people kind of way.
And that's fine. I'm happy with that being like the A-plot, the external threat, is he has to slay this great beast.
And I don't know what the internal struggle is. Is the internal struggle that he lacks confidence because he is this newer hunter and he feels like he's failing his family?
Is that what it is? Because what I wrote last week, extemporaneously, was basically that he is less than thrilled with the fact that he's struggling.
And that he is, excuse me, he is basically refused to take stores and provisions for himself because he wants to feel that hunger to egg him on, to make sure that he's sharp and taking this as seriously as he possibly can,
to make sure that he comes through for the family back home. And I like that idea. And it feels like, it feels halfway self-destructive and halfway sacrificial and noble.
Which I feel good about because this guy was originally going to be the anti-hero. I was basically going to have one hero who was like a paragon,
and who literally uses the power of light in order to, you know, like that's their power. Their power is based in light or holiness or angelic stuff.
And then, so like this bright positive, expansive loving, joyful thing. And then I wanted one character in each generation of these four eras that I'm doing to be darker and broodier.
And I guess kind of like a superman and a batman, but like even more so direct than that I think. Like more blunt about it.
And that's who this guy was supposed to be. And now I have another guy who's even more of an anti-hero than this guy.
But an anti-hero, like I discussed previously on Story Over Everything, isn't someone dark and edgy. They're just somebody who lacks traditional qualities.
So, you know, in a previous generation a hunter would have been seen as this great noble hero.
But nowadays, you know, to a modern audience he would seem less like that. So I can make him kind of my anti-hero.
But, you know, I don't want to have, well, I mean, there has to be a mix.
So, you know, there's going to be a whole gradient among my characters in each generation that mostly, I mean, I want them all to be good noble people to whatever extent.
Or to varying degrees, I guess is what I'm trying to say. So I don't know what his deal is going to be. Maybe he'll be more pragmatic.
Maybe he'll be, yeah, he'll be a hero, but he'll be kind of like a folk hero where it's more about might being, might making right and like strength being the thing that matters.
External strength. But maybe I can find a way to have that external strength be rooted in his internal strength.
And maybe as an emotional arc for, maybe what I can do is have the theme in the first and the last story for him be that he has to overcome this beast, you know, by hunting it and killing it.
But maybe, and you know, hunting isn't just killing. Hunting is tracking. Hunting is pursuing. Hunting could be capturing.
So maybe I can have a difference there be that, you know, in one book he hunts and kills and in another book he hunts and captures.
Or maybe he hunts and has no choice but to kill or tries not to kill and he ends up having to do it.
And maybe I can explore the same theme from different angles in the, I guess the bookends of his series.
But what am I going to do in the middle? I'm not 100% sure of that.
As I said previously. So, yeah, I mean, so what have I produced this episode so far? One is that I think I want the journey.
Oh, you know what? Oh, what if it's his first time in his last hunt?
And maybe because this is about bringing up the next generation, maybe, oh man, this guy have a kid get killed?
Anyway, if he's bringing up the next generation, then, or if I want this to be something that's literally passed on as a lineage
and that this guy who accidentally discovers this other world and who ends up becoming a guardian and, you know, caretaker of it in different ways,
you know, maybe he has to pass on his knowledge and like oversee a hunt for his successor.
That could be a cool thing to do. I really like that actually, like directly having that lineage, which I don't know.
I'm out of time. I went way over time. I made this a lot longer than I wanted to originally.
But hopefully you enjoyed it. Hopefully you enjoyed my anecdotes. But yeah, I need to go back to drawing board.
I definitely, I think to keep this all straight, I have to go back at some point over the next couple of days
and get my bullet points out and kind of start sketching out my ideas.
And they just keep a long running list on it through these posts until, and in my own personal notes as well,
until I have this all, you know, figured out exactly how I'm going to make the story work.
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.