Present Predicament

QOTE:

“I’m not even supposed to be here. I’m just ‘Crewman Number Six.’ I’m expendable. I’m the guy in the episode who dies to prove how serious the situation is.”

– Sam Rockewll, Galaxy Quest

The other day I was contemplating buying a gift for a professor who’s had to put up with my lackluster performance in semesters past. Then I came upon the unfortunate realization that I didn’t really know anything about said professor’s interests outside of the course material. Now, I’m not above the generic “I-have-no-idea-what-you-like-so-here-is-a-random-stylish-yet-practical-mid-priced” gift, but I generally aim for “specific enough so that you know it’s personalized for you, but generic enough that you don’t think that’s the only thing I know about you”. That got me to thinking: I wish I were the guy in the story who pops up in the very beginning and gives the main character(s) some mysterious and seemingly random trinket, simply stating, “You’ll know when to use it”.

Around this point I asked a friend who happended to be with me at the time what character archetype she would be. She seemed a bit puzzled, so I had to explain the aforementioned train of thought to her. She suggested that maybe I should go ahead and do it anyway (in reference to buying a random gift and then telling my professor a cryptic message).

I never did end up getting anything for my dear professor, but I have thought about the whole character archetype thing quite a bit. You can only have so many combinations of personality traits and plot contrivances, yet somehow new bestsellers and blockbusters are still “created”. Of course, this isn’t due to new stories being told so much as old stories being told in different ways and the size of the budget for special effects. Besides, people don’t really want new stories; they want to see the same thing they’ve seen time and time again (*cough* Kingdom of the Crystal Skull *cough*) and read the same things they’ve before (I’d imagine this probably applies to any book in the romance genre; also, Jim Davis). Curse you, franchises!

Next time: Character archetypes I wouldn’t mind being