Q and W

Some shockingly typical Questions I have seriously considered just in the last 12 hours, and the reasons Why I'm Asking them (it's a Q & W).

Q: Can the past truly be said to exist if it no longer exists in the present?

W: Hearing this iTunes U lecture, in which a charmingly-accented biographer, Richard Carwardine, reminds us that Abraham Lincoln is the most biographied man to ever live. Then wondering if anyone can really be said to be right about Lincoln.

Q: What happens if the villain succeeds in Act 1?

W: Re-reading Mell's strangely gratifying first attempt at world domination in Narbonic: Director's Cut. (*spoiler:* Mell does okay, but later admits that she made some crucial mistakes.)

If the villain fails in Act 3, that's normal. If he succeeds, that's a tragedy. Plenty of villains are foiled in Act 1 only to make a better go of it in Act 3. But what if the villain succeeds in Act 1, and so thoroughly that there's no hope of beating him back?

Thing is, in the real world, villains succeed all the time. Stalin died sleeping in his own bed. People like Alexander the Great even occasionally conquer the world.

However, unless someone is particularly bad off or goes about seeking out people who are, we don't usually think of this as a world created by villains. We tend to accept the world as it is presented to us early on.

Maybe that's because the run of history is where a traditional story act structure breaks down. It's like Malcolm says in Jurassic Park (page 369 of the paperback, or you can search for "destroy the world") - we may be in peril, but "the world" is not. Maybe it's not about good or evil, only change.

Maybe I should change my blog's motto to "making the case for relativism." Or is that too subjective?