Arcadia: Amorphous

Chapter 9: Another Story

What makes the best story? Is it plot, themes, layers of metaphors so densely crammed down the audience's throat even an English professor is forced to gag? See I think it's all about the characters. Characters are the one we fall in love with, your plot can be dull, and themes played out, you can even use the most obvious metaphors, and still, if your characters are interesting, everything else is all icing.
My name is Cody Stevens, and I always wanted to make movies, or well direct them. See Writers make the story, but directors tell it, they craft the characters, right there in real-time with real people. Every pout, every glance, every nuanced little scoff, and shrug; these are the directors' domain. Sure, writers can try, but words only get you so far, even in a good book. But in a really good book, we are all our own directors. We all see something a bit different and a bit unique. It's not the clever line, or gold heart, or even the tragic back story that lets us love a character. It's how it's spoken, how we hear them and see them, how we direct the story in our heads, or how some genius directs it up on stage.

I wanted to be a director, to conduct words into movie magic, but then I discovered real magic. Well, not real as in one being fake, but real as in, holy fuck that guy is flying, actually flying. As much as my future movie career means to me, the chance to travel through time and space to learn magic at and actual magical school is quite literally a once in a lifetime chance. More likely, and once in several lifetimes chance.

The first two weeks of my mystical education, have been interesting yet kind of bland. My roommates Jack and Brad seem pretty ok, and classes are at least partially interesting. Homeroom is split between crafting these strange crystals and trying desperately to make these rocks do anything. Next period, we get to meditate on how super special we all are and try to make our happy places. After lunch comes gym, or combat conditioning. We round off our day, by going over how everything we know about history is shit. P.S. the magic bullet that killed Kennedy, was a regular bullet. Compelling stuff right. Some kids from magical families are already doing things like basic levitation, one or two are actually breaking things. I'm still stuck with the riff-raff trying to get my gem thing to glow brighter longer.

I mean I could be my own lighting crew, but really I'd be nice if the magic came a little faster. I want the make huge explosions, levitate people, summon up some truly terrifying shit. Nightmare level stuff is the aim, non-practical, non-CG images. Real looking horrors and real looking death scene, that's the kind of dark crap that pushes deep compelling characters. You ever see an interesting hero with living parents?

Nope!

Interesting characters, make a good story, and tragedy makes characters interesting. My big tragedy I guess is my parents' divorce, although not getting divorced would have been the bigger mistake. I haven't had an abundance of character-building life moments. I'm fairly even-tempered and self-aware, only child, nice normal dad, average upbringing, it sucks. It sucks because I know this is not going to be my story. No big death's going to change me unless my dad dies, but the time compression makes that unlikely. I don't have some demons in my past, no crisis of personality, I know what I want to be, an there's no interest in watching me grow into and achieve that goal, because of how far off it is, and how uneven the playing field will be once I have magic. My life has interest to me, to my friends, and family, but there is no mass audience appeal. I love the unwilling rogues, but I can't really be one of those either. I'm looking forward to what's to come and I've got no resistance to the unknown.

I'm not writing this story, and I'm certainly not colorful enough to be one of it's main characters, but maybe I can still throw my hat in. This is a magical school, something is going to happen. We already heard word of the monsters living among us. And many of us know man can be the greatest monster of all mentors, teachers, even holy men can bare their fangs for the wrong cause.