Happiness is contagious. That smile, that joy will bring joyfulness to others and likely improve a passerby’s mood. A person smiling, dancing, singing and hips swaying, it’ll bring the best in others. Or the worst. Possessive people will want to grab happiness, make it theirs, and remove it from the world.
That beautiful smile attracted a local thief, who followed me not far after I left my workplace. Easy prey for any regular thug. Alas, my itinerary remained in public places, leaving him no opportunity to act. Luckily, going to a bar allowed him to stay nearby and figure out his prey.
After seeing the group, he figured out that he could pull off a hat trick and get four for the cost of one. Drunken happy people make the perfect targets for thieves. Now, he only needs a chance.
It happened soon thereafter with that short street, whose businesses are all closed down for the evening.
Lucky!
Planning is straightforward. Attack the allegedly slowest ones, ask them to throw their purses, make them go away, and run with the loot.
– “Good! Now, you don’t move. Everyone else, throw your purses and your phones in front of you.”
Everything is peachy, the thug internalizes. The danger comes from the Asian one, of course, she knows martial arts. And the badass butch might have a machete for all I know. The chick stands closest to me. No stress so far.
Lou, who is far from a combat person, and lacks knowledge of martial arts, would’ve wet her pants if she didn’t go to the restroom before leaving the first bar.
Same for Jamie, our softie.
Marianne, though, against all odds, needs to be able to defend herself, her job bringing her in many empty lots, early and late gigs.
However, the first rule of self-defence is collaborating in case of potential injury. Second is leaving as quickly as possible. Having your best friend with a relatively blunt knife stuck in her back counts as a breach of the first rule.
– “Good! Hurry up, throw your stuff there.” Seeing everyone react accordingly makes everything easier.
– “Now you,” pressing on Iris back a little bit more, “drop the phone and purse like everyone else.”
While I slowly execute myself, a small mouse crosses the street near our friends. Jamie screams to the top of her lungs. Our softie fears all the loose animals. In cages, and they are fine. But not here, not now, and not with this stressful situation.
The chain reaction starts. I get violently stabbed. The thug panics, having assaulted someone with a weapon for the first time. Marianne throws a self-defence kick to the foe that fails to fully incapacitate him due to adrenaline while making him see some stars. I scream and turn, only to find myself once again close to the thug, who stabs me deeply near the solar plexus.
The thug leaves running while I fall to my death.
❀
Earth is a fascinating place.
The planet boasts a complex ecosystem, yet a novel author somehow crafted it. In a planetary novel, you sketch rough ideas and a timeline of eras that will happen. Then, you gather ideas for the main events in a region and introduce your first main character. You make it interact in a sea of extras, which are programmed to nudge your main character towards this novel’s end goal while you adjust your story to the real actions of that character.
Earth has only one main character truly alive at any moment: the main character of its destiny. This is why, when it’s your turn, you feel truly alive, and the other side characters may just be extras, or they might have once been the main character.
You might give birth to someone who has already become the main character, as they matter more on a planetary scale.
This is not limited to humans, time or scale. The main character can take the form of a tiger or an amoeba. It can be a newborn that will quickly die, a main villain, an emperor, an ant, a psychotic individual, a villainess, or a random Joe.
Destiny, guidance by greater powers, constant surveillance, and other factors all apply. As a designer who crafted a block game with holes for toddlers to use, you hope that the story’s main characters will follow your predictions and fit the blocks into their rightful places so that the eras can exist and unfold. And as long as the millionth extra in a country follows the basic ideas of its destiny when it’s their turn to become the main character, you can sit back and let them do it.
Life follows its course, whether good, bad, or horrible. One’s life might consist of relaxation, one might be full of riches, and another might endure endless pain and suffering. The basic setting exists for this particular main character to live according to the story. For every hero that saves a thousand tortured prisoners requires a thousand tortured prisoners to eventually become the main characters.
Every main character shoulders the responsibility for its destiny, though. If the story contains plot holes, or if the millionth main character of that country exceeds expectations, they might be able to escape captivity with the other prisoners, or change the story drastically. Maybe a stronger guard can kill the hero. Maybe this kill is scheduled, but a slight chance exists that it’s not. Maybe the life of poverty wasn’t planned, and if their life diverges from what is scheduled, the author will have to modify the story.
The author can add extras to save an event. Or it might be worth removing a character, causing a main character to die a ridiculous death, and the other character to suffer through the aftermath of cleaning up.
In other stories, it might be better to nudge the world so the poor character avoids bankruptcy a few times, making the character seem lucky enough never to go bankrupt, no matter how poor. Yet again, it might be better to kill the overzealous guard in a freak gardening accident than have it kill the previously played out hero.
Finally, one unique possibility for the author is to make a main character migrate from one era to another. This comes in handy when the author didn’t write the character well at inception. That person will temporarily become another extra elsewhere to develop its characteristics. We could describe these events as alien abductions, but truly, they represent an author’s attempt to rectify a main character definition by sending it to another suitable era and back.
Then, when the author doesn’t know what to do anymore, this temporary cop-out can also be used:
[Pause]
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