Ancient Alien Viruses

I returned from Demicon last weekend and was immediately incapacitated with the worst stomach flu of all time.

I spent most of the week watching Ancient Aliens, a program which contends that every mystery of the ancient world can be answered by aliens. Sounds good to me. Although, I have to wonder that if ancient aliens were so prevalent, why we haven’t found at least one microprocessor. I mean, you can barely spit without hitting one these days, and we’ve only made it to the moon.

Being sick made me think about all of life’s little hassles, and the need for complications and tension in stories. It seems like the two would go hand-in-hand, like peanut butter and bananas. However, for some reason, this isn’t true. People expect tension, but only if that tension is related to the character arc, the plot, or a subplot.

In The Last Boyscout, Bruce Willis finds out his best friend is sleeping with his wife. This seems like character-building unrelated to the plot until his best friend’s car blows up because it was parked outside his house all night. This takes about 3 minutes to happen in the movie, He ends up showing what a boyscout he really is by avenging the death of the friend who slept with his wife to satisfy his personal code of justice.

Putting a random stomach flu on a protagonist just wouldn’t make for a good story. Maybe it’s because of what I write, but I don’t think people want to read about things that can happen to anyone in real life. It might work for some comic relief with a secondary character though. Regular vomiting could work as a running gag.

Pun Intended

*rimshot*

That’s it for tonight, ladies and gentlemen. Try the veal.

2 thoughts on “Ancient Alien Viruses

  1. Katy Sozaeva

    Well, it could be the ancient aliens were more environmentally aware and kept their microprocessors made of biodegradable materials … betcha never thought of THAT eh … 😉

    Reply

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