Episode 66 - Return
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Welcome back to the podcast. To another episode, a continuation of the discussion we’ve started here. And it’s a repetitive discussion, I’ll admit. We constantly revisit the same plot beats, story components, and my own inadequacies. We hash out things that could be solved. Potentially. Maybe. And there are other things that could be brought to a therapist for their professional problem solving skills. Either way, the answers are not going to come from a podcast, from repeating the same points over and over again to a somewhat captive audience. Either way, it would be best for everyone’s sake if I somehow found it in me to move on.
But that doesn’t make too much of a difference, though. It won’t actually change my behavior. I mean, it won’t change how I run this show. It likely won’t change how I run this show.
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Repetition is a valuable narrative tool. It can drill a point in. It can set the tone rather well, effectively and efficiently. If you’re using first person narration or having a character speaking just in dialogue, their repeating a point can signal some sort of anxiety or being stuck. It can also build out that that a character has some sort of fixation that may be a part of their nature or the story. For example, a character could be fixated on trains and the resulting expertise might lead them to be a critical resource as the murder mystery starts to come together.
And in some ways, the rule of three–the belief that things are more memorable to the human mind when presented in a group of at least three–could also be a form of repetition, an example of the art form you could say. Drill the point home by giving even more examples. They aren’t exactly the same from one to another to a third, but they are closely related. There is some common energy or connective tissue there. That is what is repeated.
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How often do you think of wagon wheels? Likely never. Unless that’s a special interest of yours, you have likely zero reason to think about them. And good for you if you just so happen to care about them, but I’m sure you would understand that your hobby is somewhat niche.
On the other hand, you should be thinking more about car tires. That’s the sort of knowledge that could be painfully relevant, if you live the sort of life that is dependent on cars or driving, that is. But even still, even if that is you, how often do you think of it? Changing those tires is a skill you need, but until that need arises, you don’t think about it.
The human brain will always prioritize what it thinks is necessary. And there’s nothing wrong with that, per se. It’s a survival mechanism: avoid the fire that is most likely to consume you, which is likely the biggest or closest one, the most relevant one. The tires on your car won’t meet that criteria until they actually give way.
So maybe the animators just didn’t know how to draw someone changing a wagon wheel. Maybe they had no clue about the mechanics or how to make that look, so they shifted Jade’s attention away from that and to some rocks lying just beside the road. They were rather large stones, not so much as to seem completely out of place or impossible in that setting, but they did demand to be noticed by virtue of their distinction. They were a trip hazard, a threatening weapon lurking in the desert stands. Not that Jade would have thought of them in that way. They were just there. Her eyes seemed drawn to them.
“The name’s Wyatt, by the way,” the man suddenly said, voice audibly strained as he did whatever mysterious thing was required of him to get the wheel ready.
Jade said nothing in response. She never did.
So the animator never showed what Wyatt was doing. His back remained to the audience, to the camera. Arms and shoulders would move for a bit to imply action, but besides the hammer he set down, there was no real substance to what he might have been doing. There was no way to know.
And I suppose that’s okay. It wasn’t really what mattered, now was it?
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On the other hand, there is something called semantic satiation, and those words might mean nothing to you, but it is an experience that you’ve likely had before. It’s the experience of a word being said so frequently in such a short period of time that for a moment, it doesn’t mean much of anything. It’s a dulled perception of the word as the mind grows sick of hearing it.
Like so much of what happens in the human mind, the exact mechanism isn’t within my grasp. But when I looked into it, the word “fatigue” came up frequently. Like the brain is just tired of it. Understandable, I guess, but what does that even mean? Is the brain craving novelty? Or is it the other side of that coin? That the brain can’t handle the same force wearing on the exact same spot, as if it knows how the Grand Canyon was formed: water wearing down at the same spot in the rock for millions of years until the structure we see today was all that remains. It’s a stunning sight, don’t get me wrong, but if that same sort of thing was to happen to a person, they would likely not survive. And so, the brain has to prevent this, somehow, even if the destruction is more figurative.
After all, I’ve experienced that destruction. It isn’t pretty.
Consequently, I am going to be afraid of inflicting that sort of thing on another person. I’m going to feel like I’m imposing simply by the mental real estate this nothingness takes up, never mind the damage that it could do if it keeps landing the same way. So maybe I shouldn’t be repeating myself. I mean, I know I shouldn’t, but at the same time, I can’t help it. I’m too broken, I think.
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Wyatt is such a cliched name for a character in the Wild West. That’s probably rude of me to say as someone who also sucks at naming things, but look, choices like that immerse you so deeply that the illusion kind of snaps. And frankly, that was true of his entire character design. Wyatt seemed too much like an ordinary guy of the American West. He wasn’t a cowboy or some sort of folk hero that plays into your fantasies. Rather, he was an ordinary man who had an ordinary life. And that included family.
“I’m looking for my brother,” he said as he straightened up, wheel now in place.
A soft groan left his lips as his back protested all the bending and movement. He wasn’t a young man, but he didn’t seem particularly old either. And that made it hard to know what his brother would be like. He just mattered to Wyatt, clearly.
And Jade understood that well enough. She didn’t seem to have siblings. Or, at least, we never saw them. We never saw any other child from Jade’s origin world go with her on these adventures, and it just seemed like if a sibling existed that would be where they’d be. They would be by her side, at least for one adventure. But either way, Jade would have understood what a sibling was. The concept would have been within her reach.
She didn’t say as much though. She didn’t say a word.
“He came out this way for a missus,” Wyatt then said.
A wife he meant. I can piece that together now. But it was harder to do back then. It wasn’t the sort of language a child would have been used to hearing. So Jade might have been confused, but if she was, she said nothing to that end.
There was something else on her mind as Wyatt presented a hand to her, helping her step onto the wagon for a ride to wherever he meant to go.
She still needed her quest, after all. She knew how the story was supposed to go.
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It’s not a conscious choice. But I am stuck. I am stuck in something, a loop I have to break.
Repetition is not useful for me. It is my nightmare. It is a nightmare that is unravelling me. It is not just the sights and sounds that are coming undone as my brain grows tired. Everything has been unravelling.
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The horse pulling the wagon moved with a deliberate but slow step, as if it knew there was no reason to rush. Wyatt’s face begged to differ, on the other hand. His brow was furrowed. His voice was low when he tried to make small talk about the various shops and horses around. There wasn’t much to see or discuss in a place like that, but he did his best to fill the silence. Jade certainly wasn’t going to.
She might have wanted to, though. It might have been something she saw the appeal of. There was a hint of curiosity in her eyes. And a question sat on her lips, but she did not dare to utter it aloud. Or she couldn’t. I don’t know if we ever settled that question of whether or not Jade could talk.
Wyatt might have felt the weight of that star, which was a message in and of itself. It would be the sort of thing that one might find hard to ignore.
“He came out here,” Wyatt finally said. “And I haven’t heard from him since.”
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Jade wasn’t a hero. She was a child who sometimes stumbled into circumstances that required a hero. She was a child who had something that others didn’t in the form of whatever magic gave her art tools conjuring powers. She was a child, though. Full stop. She was a child. That’s what she was. She couldn’t have handled something like that.
But of course, she wanted to try. She had to try. It was her job to. That was what she was there for: to solve some sort of crisis, the first one she stumbled upon. It was a role she had played many times before. There was no reason to question it now.
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Aishi Online is a production of Miscellany Media Studios. It is written, produced, performed, and edited by MJ Bailey with music from the Sounds like an Earful music supply. If you like the show, please leave a review, tell a friend, or post about it on some mysterious online forum. You do you.