A Night on a Satellite Station on Mars (Episode 6) Transcript
Sorry this is late! Audio version of the episode can be found here.
Hannah: A low-budget bodyguard is chosen by God to survive a serial killer's attack before a seemingly chance encounter seems too good to be true.
Jennie: Somebody write this.
Hannah: Hi, and welcome to Somebody Write This, where we use a random plot generator to give us an idea and then brainstorm how that could be a thing somebody might want to write. I'm Hannah.
Jennie: And I'm Jennie.
Hannah: And to help us with our brainstorming today, we have a guest. Welcome, Elise Svetz.
Elise: Hi.
Hannah: We're so excited you could join us today. As I was talking with Jennie and with you about your writing history and the stories that you like to study, I love that you have an area of expertise that we haven't really dealt with before. You worked a lot with medieval studies and medieval stories and with mythology and fairy tales. So I want to take a second to talk a little bit about your take on that. I saw that you have written dissertations on King Arthur and Robin Hood. These are both characters who have been adapted so many times into their own stories, into modern versions and musicals and every different iteration of it you can expect is out there. From all the work you've done with them, is there something that you are still just waiting to see the next big adaptation of either one of these tackle, a spin that you think they miss all the time or a detail that never gets in there? What are you just aching to see in your next King Arthur or Robin Hood adaptation?
Elise: I actually don't know. To be honest, I'm more surprised at what people have already done because the more you go into it, the more just amazed that I am by people's creativity, seeing Robin Hood in space, seeing King Arthur as a woman, as the president, everything that they do. My first dissertation was actually about Arthurian religion in that there are sects of paganism that use the characters of Arthurian mythology, and I do use that word with qualifications, as the gods and goddesses of their religion. Yeah, that was originally what drew me to it, the idea that you can take something that has just been thought of as a story, a fiction, for so long and have it be something that people will commit to so sincerely and wholeheartedly.
Jennie: That's really cool.
Hannah: Do you have a personal favorite version of either one of these stories or do you just love all of them?
Elise: Okay, I will tell you that the BBC is what brought me to my first Master's degree. I watched the show Merlin, and that led me to study the character of Nimue, and that's how I found out that she was a goddess in Arthurian religion. And so I was looking at the different iterations of her over the years, how she went from being a wise woman, how she was demonized and villainized by the Victorians who literally turned her into a whore, and then having her come back as a goddess is just fascinating. But that's not the point. You weren't asking me about that. So Merlin on the BBC. And Robin Hood, I have so many versions that bring so many things to it. Can I give shout outs to the worst?
Hannah: Yes, I would love to hear the worst.
Elise: Okay. Well, first of all, there is Robin Hood and Zombies. It's a German version where Robin Hood, he sits down and he shares how to be a socialist to the camera. And then at the end out of nowhere, they're attacked by the merry men who have been turned into zombies. It is just fascinating. And then the second one, TNT, the same people who did Xena and Hercules, did a version of Robin Hood. The first episode is "Robin Hood and the Mongols" and, yes, Mongols come to Sherwood Forest to attack. Everything from the clothing, which is the tiny little Greek skirts for men and women, down to the plot-- And oh my gosh, the writing, you cannot believe the cheesy writing. It is just gem of the worst.
Jennie: That sounds so horrific I might have to find it.
Elise: I would suggest yeah.
Hannah: I love seeing how very creative people get with this. I'm a theater person and I love doing that with Shakespeare. I love seeing the so many different ways and tactics and adaptations that people use to take these characters that we've known for centuries and put new spins on them. In terms of looking at these older stories. mythology and fairy tales, these awere told to teach stories and sometimes to explain the world. What is the primary value for us in studying these stories today? If they have a-- Do they have a different meaning than they do today? Do they have different purposes? What do we get out of them today?
Elise: There are actually quite a few things that we can get out of them. Thank you for sending me into my dissertation here, mylittle high horse.
Hannah: Yeah, I figured this would be applicable.
Elise: One of the reasons that Robin Hood is so important is because Robin Hood is a symbol of British nationalism. And Robin Hood is a brand that is recognized worldwide. People come to England to walk in the same places that a fictional character walked. I mean, there are studies about prisons all over Britain where the inmates say, "I'm Robin Hood, man, you know, I'm Robin Hood, because I stole that stereo and I gave the money to people who needed it." And it gives them a sense of community and a sense of national pride. If you're looking at it from a religious perspective, you can learn religious things, being that it's actually a growing religion, people coming to Arthurianism. And so if nothing else, I think that it's always fascinating to look at different religions and see the ways that they match up and see the ways that they vary. When I did start learning about it, I was really impressed by the nature-- the more equality between male and female roles in Arthurian religion, whereas most Christian religions seem to be very male-centric, this really gives-- It needs both men and women to work, which I like a lot. And then if you really want to know what a country values, look at the stories that it tells its children, everything from you're watching toys run across your screen and you are learning that loyalty is important. The kids are sitting there learning, "Okay, well, I should always stick by my friends the same way that Woody and Buzz stick together." I mean, from so many different points of views, they're really relevant today and frankly, they're just fun. And yeah, it's like they say at the end of The Greatest Showman: Making people smile is a value in a world that is dark and scary. Having something that lifts and entertain you is worthwhile in and of itself.
Hannah: I like that a lot. I like that a lot. Final question on this. What stories do you think that we are telling more currently might end up in that sort of pantheon of mythology and fairy tales centuries down the road?
Elise: Ooh, that's a good one. Harry Potter clearly has already been added to that.
Hannah: That was my first thought.
Elise: Yeah, there's no way that that one's going away. And I am a big fan of Harry Potter as well, and just the amount of mythology that is already bred and woven into those stories. So I would say that that one is number one. And frankly, I know that Disney is not going anywhere either. So you've already started to see like-- After Mulan came out, I started seeing cultural performances of countries that really didn't have anything to do with the story performing the story of Mulan as part of their culture. So if it's Disney, it's going to be adapted, and it's going to be retold.
Hannah: Well, thank you so much for sharing that with us, Elise. It's just a level of expertise on an area that we haven't had a chance to really talk about here on the show before. So thank you so much. Before we jump into our plot, again, we have just two little pieces of housekeeping. First of all, we got another writer submission that I want to be able to read a piece of. Actually, I'm going to read the whole thing because what we actually got, we got a sonnet based on our second episode, "The Computer: The Useless. "That was the one about Marie the angel and the seasoned cameraman who sabotaged the lorry because he was angry. We got a submission from Kevin Megill about this one, which was a sonnet. So I want to go ahead and share this. We're going to put it on our blog as well, but I'm just going to go ahead and read the whole thing because sonnets are short and I want you to be able to hear the different ways that people are taking this. So this is the sonnet based on "The Computer: The Useless." [Text of the sonnet is read aloud.] So I will go ahead and put that up on our blog as well so that you can read it. Continue sending us submissions, listeners. As you see, we love anything that comes out of this, and we would love to share pieces of it on the podcast and share whatever you'd be willing to have us share on the blog as well. The other thing I want to make sure and mention, because we haven't mentioned it on the podcast yet, is we also have a Facebook page. We did set this up a couple of weeks ago. And so we post our new episodes up there. We also have been known to occasionally put out a call for guests on there. So if you're interested in guesting on the podcast, make sure you follow us. The URL is just "somebodywritethis," but you can also just search "Somebody Write This podcast" and it will show up and you'll be able to find that. So with all that we are going to go ahead and we're going to jump into our story. So, as a reminder, our topic, our plot is, a low-budget bodyguard is chosen by God to survive a serial killer's attack before a seemingly chance encounter that seems too good to be true.
Elise: I'm seeing this-- Are you guys familiar with the show Lucifer?
Hannah: A little bit. I've seen some.
Elise: I'm seeing this as more of a Lucifer type God where he's kind of manipulative and not really the sweet loving God, but one who's always got his hand in things and has always got an extra plot and plan and very good at planning ahead. So he definitely chose this guy for a purpose later on, and maybe wants him to feel indebted, or he needed the power of having a miracle to save him to face something later on.
Hannah: So if that's our God character, are we leading towards a confrontation of some sorts?
Jennie: Do we need to figure out why he's chosen to survive a serial killer's attack?
Elise: I think so.
Hannah: Yeah, this is what I think we're gonna have to untangle a tiny bit at a time because I keep just looking at it going, what do we do with this?
Elise: There is something that he needs to-- that God needs him to do later on. And the fact that he was chosen seems like it's not that he was destined or fated to do it, but God was like, "I need somebody."
Jennie: "To survive this attack."
Elise: "So you're it."
Jennie: Okay, but what if it's like, somebody needed to survive the attack for a reason?
Hannah: Like it's not that the bodyguard had something to do afterwards, it's that for some reason someone needed to survive a serial killer attack.
Jennie: Like maybe to catch the serial killer, for instance Like maybe there needed to be a witness.
Hannah: Or is it a moraculous sort of survival that is going to be assigned to somebody. Like is it going to-- Does it--
Elise: I'm actually picturing him dying for a minute, seeing God and having God telling him--
Hannah: God's like, "Back down you go."
Elise: Yeah.
Jennie: Okay, so not survive unscathed.
Elise: Yeah. And so then he comes back and that power of him having died and come back and that power of having a miracle happen changes him and his very nature. Maybe it attracts the attention of some less desirable, like, demons and whatnot, or maybe it just changes because he has been changed, then the future is changed, and he attracts the seemingly chance encounters.
Hannah: So the chance encounters are a direct result of his death and resurrection.
Jennie: So like now because of the nature of his existence, having come like this-- Is this guy just attracting miracles around him?
Hannah: Or maybe attracting-- maybe he keeps encountering like certain types of people like maybe people who are going to be victims of something like the people who people have had murderous thoughts toward or something. He keeps running into them. And so he finds he has a chance to prevent their murders by warning them or something. Maybe it's some kind of thing like that-- these seemingly chance encounters all have a pattern and once he figures out that pattern, he can change the world in a better way.
Elise: Yeah, well that's like in Ghost Town how once Ricky Gervais dies he can see dead people, whereas this time once he dies, he is attracted people who are going to die.
Hannah: Oh, that's dark and interesting. For him to realize this, it means that there's going to have be a couple of times where this happens before he can warn them, so he's gonna have to have times where he has like three people who he just met who go missing, or are found, and he's like, "What's going on?"
Elise: Well, and if this is going to happen, I'm feeling that one of them, he starts dating this woman and he's really attracted to her. And they actually go on a couple of dates before she's murdered, just to really like, jab the knife in a little bit more.
Hannah: And this adds an extra layer to because like, if this becomes a thing that he meets people, and then they die, that makes him incredibly suspicious. At the same time you've got you've got our antagonist, I guess, who is a detective who's investigating maybe the same serial killer and is starting to be suspicious of this person, starting to put pieces together in a way that makes total sense, except it's wrong.
Elise: So the serial killer is still at large after he survives, or is this another serial killer?
Hannah: Yeah, I don't know. I just thought there was a serial killer. We could connect, we don't have to.
Jennie: Well, that's a good question. Because what if it's-- Like there are copycats, right? So what if there's somebody who's going to copycat the first serial killer and then learns about this guy and starts using him as the trigger to choose his victims.
Hannah: So it could be like one long finding-the-murderer story that we think ends and then continues.
Jennie: Maybe.
Elise: Though I do wonder, after the first murderer's died, is this something that this guy is doomed to for the rest of his life? Or is it that he was sent for a specific time period and to get to that specific bad guy and then it's over?
Hannah: Yeah. Is this just his mission forever now, that if he encounters somebody, there's a good chance there-- Or maybe there's like a specific way that he encounters them that clues him into, "This person is going to be murdered."
Jennie: I can see this poor guy like being so paranoid about like leaving his house. "Don't talk to me. I'm a stranger."
Hannah: I feel like you could almost do like the entire like middle section of Groundhog Day, which is just him like experimenting with the different things that this means and trying different things. I feel like that's almost what happens here. Like he tries different ways to do things. And he's just like, "I don't know what's happening. Maybe if I don't-- Maybe if I stay inside, nothing will happen."
Jennie: Right. Like, "How do I live my life so that I don't kill people?"
Hannah: Somebody comes to the door and he doesn't answer and they leave, and then he finds out that that was the person. So he's like, "There's no escaping it, it's gonna happen." Yeah, I kind of like the idea of it being all-- yeah, maybe one specific-- If it's one specific person it has an endpoint, like it has an end goal.
Elise: It changes the nature of it, because if there's one specific person then it's an adventure story, and if it is a forever thing, then it's a horror story because this guy will never get better and his entire life will be full of this terrible thing. So yeah, it goes very dark or it can be very upbeat, "Yay, let's finish this one thing and then I'll be free."
Hannah: And you can maybe play with a little bit of both. You can maybe have it be like mostly we're going to find this one person, then maybe God's like, but I could turn this back on anytime I need to. Almost like, "You still owe me, you're still alive."
Elise: Or the sequel.
Hannah: Or the sequel, yeah. I think I'm going to toss in the title because I think we may need a couple minutes to figure out what to do with it. Okay. So our title is "A Night on a Satellite Station in Mars," which is not our setting at all.
Jennie: We just went to Mars last time.
Hannah: We did, we just went to Mars in our last video, so I don't want to do that again. I want this to be metaphorical somehow.
Elise: What if the guy works in a virtual reality simulator?
Hannah: Okay, okay,
Elise: So people come in and--
Jennie: And then here's the other thing I thought. Is it "night," N-I-G-H-T, or is it "k-night"?
Hannah: It's with an N. Just an N.
Jennie: I got excited because we were talking about Arthurian legend and then you said "a (k)night."
Elise: So if he works at a virtual reality thing he, you know, hands out the goggles to people, and that's how he meets all of these people.
Hannah: He is also a low-budget bodyguard.
Elise: Oh, yeah.
Hannah: But was he a bodyguard and then gave that up after being attacked? Like maybe he still has physical symptoms and maybe he's not up to physical stance of being able to be a bodyguard anymore. So maybe he gets this job, virtual reality.
Elise: What if he was working security for NASA or some other sort of scientific thing that was studying Mars and has like a fake Mars set up? They do have Mars simulations to try to see if people could survive on Mars. And I mean, they're highly-- So that would be--
Hannah: And this wouldn't even necessarily need to be the setting of the entire place as long as it was the setting during a time that was thematically important. So maybe this is where he is when he gets attacked and survives the attack. And that's the night that changes everything kind of thing.
Elise: Yeah.
Hannah: So you can make that-- So he doesn't have to necessarily live in the Mars simulator or be there all the time. We don't need all the murders to happen there, because that's tricky. You'd think eventually they'd just put up a guard there and be like, "Nope." But I think that could be you know there is this one does have a singular point at which there was a before and after, a distinctive point in time. And I think at that point in time-- This is the night on the satellite station on Mars.
Jennie: This is the night where I died and talked to God and came back to life, and now my life is completely different.
Elise: Oh, I'm actually reading the intro right now to sound as weird and unrelatable as possible. "This is what happened to me. I died. I came back. I talked to God. And the whole thing happened on Mars."
Hannah: Exactly.
Jennie: Very nice.
Hannah: Yeah, it's great. That's definitely this voiceover moment.
Jennie: And then you see the camera like panning out and showing that's not actually Mars. It's a set in a room.
Hannah: Yeah, it shows him lying on the ground, bleeding everywhere.
Jennie: On Mars.
Hannah: And then he abruptly sits back up, is fine.
Elise: With a gasp.
Hannah: With a gasp, and then it pans out and he's not on Mars. So it starts off setting up, this is what happened, this is what happened, and then you're like, "Undo, undo."
Jennie: I would totally watch that based on that opening alone.
Hannah: That's a strong start there.
Elise: You know, also, I'm saying, if he keeps being a bodyguard, he's got to be the worst bodyguard ever if people around him keep dying and people around him are always being targeted by serial killers or murderers.
Hannah: You're right!
Jennie: It does say he's a low-budget bodyguard.
Elise: Very low budget.
Hannah: Very low.
Elise: Which isn't his fault, because everybody-- I mean, normally their biggest threats are, like, people are going to harass them with cameras, whereas this guy is always up against murderers.
Jennie: Oh gosh, yeah, like, "Nobody hire this guy."
Hannah: It's true. Which again, gives him an even stronger reason to "I have to get this done and find this so that I can be finished with this forever." Well, we're just about at the end of our time discussing this, but I like this. I think this is a really interesting piece. Is there any major piece that you think we're missing?
Elise: Does God keep coming back to talk to him periodically?
Hannah: That's a good question.
Elise: Is this a one time thing or does he regularly see God?
Jennie: That's a very good question. We might have to leave that up to our listeners.
Hannah: I feel like it's probably more interesting if he's just kind of dropped back off and does not talk to him again, because otherwise he could just be like, "Hey, so who's the serial killer?"
Elise: But God is enigmatic and God wants him to go on the journey. Either that or he gets messengers from God that just say, "Find Alan Schwartz."
Jennie: No, what if the messengers from God are other people who have had near death experiences? And so God keeps bringing people back just to give a message to this guy.
Hannah: Oh, interesting.
Elise: What if corpses sit up and talk to him.
Hannah: Oh my gosh!
Elise: Whenever he sees a dead person, they give him a message from God.
Jennie: Oh my gosh. That would be creepy and hilarious.
Hannah: That does speed up his knowledge of what's happening.
Elise: It's the catalyst that gets him going to the different places.
Jennie: See, now we've got an adventure horror/comedy going.
Hannah: We do. The tone of this, I think, can go in so many different ways. I think we're good. I think let's leave the rest of it up to the listeners to go in whichever direction they want. So what do we still need to know from that? What do we need them to nail down for us?
Jennie: I think we need to know what the purpose of this guy's journey is, what does God want him to do? And I think we need to know more about his person-- We haven't discussed his personality at all. We've just discussed his job. And then the various mechanics we discussed. Which one do you guys think is the one that's going to work here? Are corpses coming back to life? Is this guy good luck or bad luck? What's the side character? Who does he contact with who's going through the journey with him? Is another question.
Elise: Can we ever get close to somebody? Or is it just completely doomed?
Hannah: This is interesting. This could go so many different ways and still be the same story.
Jennie: We need Christopher Nolan on this one.
Hannah: I want two different writer submissions. I want one that goes like full comedy and one that goes like full existential horror. Because you really could. All right, fantastic. Well, before we close out today, first of all, I want to thank you, Elise, for joining us. And I want to give you a second if you would like to mention anything you would like to plug, any writing that we can find online or social media you'd like to plug for listeners. Anything you want to share?
Elise: Well, first of all, thank you for having me on. It was really fun. I enjoyed myself a lot. But secondly, if you are going to-- If you want to know the true, like the basics of Robin Hood, the way that it's been portrayed over the years, watch the show Robin of Sherwood. It is the most 80s hair-band-rific thing you will ever see in your life. But it is the one that the parodies are based on, so that is a really good basis if you want to do that. Whereas if you want to know the basics of Arthurian literature, read The Squire's Tale by Gerald Moore. It is a 12- or 13-book series and it will give you the stories of all of the knights. So you will have a great working knowledge after that.
Hannah: Fantastic. And Jennie and I will also go ahead and share a story of our own that we think our listeners should check out. Mine this week is a little bit unusual, I want to shout out the AI Dungeon app. This is an app that I found mentioned on a blog. It's based around those texts adventures that were all over the place, where you would type in the commands. Zork and those where it would guide you through a story. The way this one works is, you type in the commands and make your character move and tell your character what to do, but the text in between and the responses are all written by an artificial intelligence. So it bases some of its knowledge on stories that it's read before and on other people's things that they've set up, but a lot of it ends up getting a little bit garbled. But it's kind of fascinating to try to work together with this robot writer to guide the story to where you want. And sometimes it goes in really unexpected directions. I started one where I crafted it as being about a woman traveling the Oregon Trail. And about halfway through, the bot just announced, "You get on a bus and drive to Oregon." So sometimes it goes in unusual directions. It's very much like this podcast in that it gives you unexpected twists and turns and you have to kind of figure out how to run with them. So that's my recommendation for this week. Jennie, how about yours?
Jennie: Well, it's a new year. And I asked for book recommendations from pretty much everybody that I know and I have a list of 85 titles to read this year, so I've got a tall order ahead of me. But I read the first one on my list. It's Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear. It's a young woman starting an agency where she helps people figure stuff out, detective investigation type work, and this was the first one so it's also kind of her origin story. She's a little bit Mary Sue and I found the writing awkward in places, but it was a very pleasant read. So if you're into detective stories, this one's set in about World War One and the aftermath in the 20s. So it was a very nice story and it was a pleasant read, and it's the first in a series, so you should check that one out.
Hannah: All right, fantastic. And that is our episode. As a reminder, you can find us every other Thursday wherever you get your podcasts.
Jennie: Follow us on Twitter @writethispod and if you've been inspired by this episode and have questions or comments or a story or anything else email us at somebodywritethis@gmail.com We would love to hear from you.
Hannah: We will be back with another episode in two weeks. See you then.
Jennie: And as they say, cabbage cooked twice is death.
Hannah: A low-budget bodyguard is chosen by God to survive a serial killer's attack before a seemingly chance encounter seems too good to be true.
Jennie: Somebody write this.
Hannah: Hi, and welcome to Somebody Write This, where we use a random plot generator to give us an idea and then brainstorm how that could be a thing somebody might want to write. I'm Hannah.
Jennie: And I'm Jennie.
Hannah: And to help us with our brainstorming today, we have a guest. Welcome, Elise Svetz.
Elise: Hi.
Hannah: We're so excited you could join us today. As I was talking with Jennie and with you about your writing history and the stories that you like to study, I love that you have an area of expertise that we haven't really dealt with before. You worked a lot with medieval studies and medieval stories and with mythology and fairy tales. So I want to take a second to talk a little bit about your take on that. I saw that you have written dissertations on King Arthur and Robin Hood. These are both characters who have been adapted so many times into their own stories, into modern versions and musicals and every different iteration of it you can expect is out there. From all the work you've done with them, is there something that you are still just waiting to see the next big adaptation of either one of these tackle, a spin that you think they miss all the time or a detail that never gets in there? What are you just aching to see in your next King Arthur or Robin Hood adaptation?
Elise: I actually don't know. To be honest, I'm more surprised at what people have already done because the more you go into it, the more just amazed that I am by people's creativity, seeing Robin Hood in space, seeing King Arthur as a woman, as the president, everything that they do. My first dissertation was actually about Arthurian religion in that there are sects of paganism that use the characters of Arthurian mythology, and I do use that word with qualifications, as the gods and goddesses of their religion. Yeah, that was originally what drew me to it, the idea that you can take something that has just been thought of as a story, a fiction, for so long and have it be something that people will commit to so sincerely and wholeheartedly.
Jennie: That's really cool.
Hannah: Do you have a personal favorite version of either one of these stories or do you just love all of them?
Elise: Okay, I will tell you that the BBC is what brought me to my first Master's degree. I watched the show Merlin, and that led me to study the character of Nimue, and that's how I found out that she was a goddess in Arthurian religion. And so I was looking at the different iterations of her over the years, how she went from being a wise woman, how she was demonized and villainized by the Victorians who literally turned her into a whore, and then having her come back as a goddess is just fascinating. But that's not the point. You weren't asking me about that. So Merlin on the BBC. And Robin Hood, I have so many versions that bring so many things to it. Can I give shout outs to the worst?
Hannah: Yes, I would love to hear the worst.
Elise: Okay. Well, first of all, there is Robin Hood and Zombies. It's a German version where Robin Hood, he sits down and he shares how to be a socialist to the camera. And then at the end out of nowhere, they're attacked by the merry men who have been turned into zombies. It is just fascinating. And then the second one, TNT, the same people who did Xena and Hercules, did a version of Robin Hood. The first episode is "Robin Hood and the Mongols" and, yes, Mongols come to Sherwood Forest to attack. Everything from the clothing, which is the tiny little Greek skirts for men and women, down to the plot-- And oh my gosh, the writing, you cannot believe the cheesy writing. It is just gem of the worst.
Jennie: That sounds so horrific I might have to find it.
Elise: I would suggest yeah.
Hannah: I love seeing how very creative people get with this. I'm a theater person and I love doing that with Shakespeare. I love seeing the so many different ways and tactics and adaptations that people use to take these characters that we've known for centuries and put new spins on them. In terms of looking at these older stories. mythology and fairy tales, these awere told to teach stories and sometimes to explain the world. What is the primary value for us in studying these stories today? If they have a-- Do they have a different meaning than they do today? Do they have different purposes? What do we get out of them today?
Elise: There are actually quite a few things that we can get out of them. Thank you for sending me into my dissertation here, mylittle high horse.
Hannah: Yeah, I figured this would be applicable.
Elise: One of the reasons that Robin Hood is so important is because Robin Hood is a symbol of British nationalism. And Robin Hood is a brand that is recognized worldwide. People come to England to walk in the same places that a fictional character walked. I mean, there are studies about prisons all over Britain where the inmates say, "I'm Robin Hood, man, you know, I'm Robin Hood, because I stole that stereo and I gave the money to people who needed it." And it gives them a sense of community and a sense of national pride. If you're looking at it from a religious perspective, you can learn religious things, being that it's actually a growing religion, people coming to Arthurianism. And so if nothing else, I think that it's always fascinating to look at different religions and see the ways that they match up and see the ways that they vary. When I did start learning about it, I was really impressed by the nature-- the more equality between male and female roles in Arthurian religion, whereas most Christian religions seem to be very male-centric, this really gives-- It needs both men and women to work, which I like a lot. And then if you really want to know what a country values, look at the stories that it tells its children, everything from you're watching toys run across your screen and you are learning that loyalty is important. The kids are sitting there learning, "Okay, well, I should always stick by my friends the same way that Woody and Buzz stick together." I mean, from so many different points of views, they're really relevant today and frankly, they're just fun. And yeah, it's like they say at the end of The Greatest Showman: Making people smile is a value in a world that is dark and scary. Having something that lifts and entertain you is worthwhile in and of itself.
Hannah: I like that a lot. I like that a lot. Final question on this. What stories do you think that we are telling more currently might end up in that sort of pantheon of mythology and fairy tales centuries down the road?
Elise: Ooh, that's a good one. Harry Potter clearly has already been added to that.
Hannah: That was my first thought.
Elise: Yeah, there's no way that that one's going away. And I am a big fan of Harry Potter as well, and just the amount of mythology that is already bred and woven into those stories. So I would say that that one is number one. And frankly, I know that Disney is not going anywhere either. So you've already started to see like-- After Mulan came out, I started seeing cultural performances of countries that really didn't have anything to do with the story performing the story of Mulan as part of their culture. So if it's Disney, it's going to be adapted, and it's going to be retold.
Hannah: Well, thank you so much for sharing that with us, Elise. It's just a level of expertise on an area that we haven't had a chance to really talk about here on the show before. So thank you so much. Before we jump into our plot, again, we have just two little pieces of housekeeping. First of all, we got another writer submission that I want to be able to read a piece of. Actually, I'm going to read the whole thing because what we actually got, we got a sonnet based on our second episode, "The Computer: The Useless. "That was the one about Marie the angel and the seasoned cameraman who sabotaged the lorry because he was angry. We got a submission from Kevin Megill about this one, which was a sonnet. So I want to go ahead and share this. We're going to put it on our blog as well, but I'm just going to go ahead and read the whole thing because sonnets are short and I want you to be able to hear the different ways that people are taking this. So this is the sonnet based on "The Computer: The Useless." [Text of the sonnet is read aloud.] So I will go ahead and put that up on our blog as well so that you can read it. Continue sending us submissions, listeners. As you see, we love anything that comes out of this, and we would love to share pieces of it on the podcast and share whatever you'd be willing to have us share on the blog as well. The other thing I want to make sure and mention, because we haven't mentioned it on the podcast yet, is we also have a Facebook page. We did set this up a couple of weeks ago. And so we post our new episodes up there. We also have been known to occasionally put out a call for guests on there. So if you're interested in guesting on the podcast, make sure you follow us. The URL is just "somebodywritethis," but you can also just search "Somebody Write This podcast" and it will show up and you'll be able to find that. So with all that we are going to go ahead and we're going to jump into our story. So, as a reminder, our topic, our plot is, a low-budget bodyguard is chosen by God to survive a serial killer's attack before a seemingly chance encounter that seems too good to be true.
Elise: I'm seeing this-- Are you guys familiar with the show Lucifer?
Hannah: A little bit. I've seen some.
Elise: I'm seeing this as more of a Lucifer type God where he's kind of manipulative and not really the sweet loving God, but one who's always got his hand in things and has always got an extra plot and plan and very good at planning ahead. So he definitely chose this guy for a purpose later on, and maybe wants him to feel indebted, or he needed the power of having a miracle to save him to face something later on.
Hannah: So if that's our God character, are we leading towards a confrontation of some sorts?
Jennie: Do we need to figure out why he's chosen to survive a serial killer's attack?
Elise: I think so.
Hannah: Yeah, this is what I think we're gonna have to untangle a tiny bit at a time because I keep just looking at it going, what do we do with this?
Elise: There is something that he needs to-- that God needs him to do later on. And the fact that he was chosen seems like it's not that he was destined or fated to do it, but God was like, "I need somebody."
Jennie: "To survive this attack."
Elise: "So you're it."
Jennie: Okay, but what if it's like, somebody needed to survive the attack for a reason?
Hannah: Like it's not that the bodyguard had something to do afterwards, it's that for some reason someone needed to survive a serial killer attack.
Jennie: Like maybe to catch the serial killer, for instance Like maybe there needed to be a witness.
Hannah: Or is it a moraculous sort of survival that is going to be assigned to somebody. Like is it going to-- Does it--
Elise: I'm actually picturing him dying for a minute, seeing God and having God telling him--
Hannah: God's like, "Back down you go."
Elise: Yeah.
Jennie: Okay, so not survive unscathed.
Elise: Yeah. And so then he comes back and that power of him having died and come back and that power of having a miracle happen changes him and his very nature. Maybe it attracts the attention of some less desirable, like, demons and whatnot, or maybe it just changes because he has been changed, then the future is changed, and he attracts the seemingly chance encounters.
Hannah: So the chance encounters are a direct result of his death and resurrection.
Jennie: So like now because of the nature of his existence, having come like this-- Is this guy just attracting miracles around him?
Hannah: Or maybe attracting-- maybe he keeps encountering like certain types of people like maybe people who are going to be victims of something like the people who people have had murderous thoughts toward or something. He keeps running into them. And so he finds he has a chance to prevent their murders by warning them or something. Maybe it's some kind of thing like that-- these seemingly chance encounters all have a pattern and once he figures out that pattern, he can change the world in a better way.
Elise: Yeah, well that's like in Ghost Town how once Ricky Gervais dies he can see dead people, whereas this time once he dies, he is attracted people who are going to die.
Hannah: Oh, that's dark and interesting. For him to realize this, it means that there's going to have be a couple of times where this happens before he can warn them, so he's gonna have to have times where he has like three people who he just met who go missing, or are found, and he's like, "What's going on?"
Elise: Well, and if this is going to happen, I'm feeling that one of them, he starts dating this woman and he's really attracted to her. And they actually go on a couple of dates before she's murdered, just to really like, jab the knife in a little bit more.
Hannah: And this adds an extra layer to because like, if this becomes a thing that he meets people, and then they die, that makes him incredibly suspicious. At the same time you've got you've got our antagonist, I guess, who is a detective who's investigating maybe the same serial killer and is starting to be suspicious of this person, starting to put pieces together in a way that makes total sense, except it's wrong.
Elise: So the serial killer is still at large after he survives, or is this another serial killer?
Hannah: Yeah, I don't know. I just thought there was a serial killer. We could connect, we don't have to.
Jennie: Well, that's a good question. Because what if it's-- Like there are copycats, right? So what if there's somebody who's going to copycat the first serial killer and then learns about this guy and starts using him as the trigger to choose his victims.
Hannah: So it could be like one long finding-the-murderer story that we think ends and then continues.
Jennie: Maybe.
Elise: Though I do wonder, after the first murderer's died, is this something that this guy is doomed to for the rest of his life? Or is it that he was sent for a specific time period and to get to that specific bad guy and then it's over?
Hannah: Yeah. Is this just his mission forever now, that if he encounters somebody, there's a good chance there-- Or maybe there's like a specific way that he encounters them that clues him into, "This person is going to be murdered."
Jennie: I can see this poor guy like being so paranoid about like leaving his house. "Don't talk to me. I'm a stranger."
Hannah: I feel like you could almost do like the entire like middle section of Groundhog Day, which is just him like experimenting with the different things that this means and trying different things. I feel like that's almost what happens here. Like he tries different ways to do things. And he's just like, "I don't know what's happening. Maybe if I don't-- Maybe if I stay inside, nothing will happen."
Jennie: Right. Like, "How do I live my life so that I don't kill people?"
Hannah: Somebody comes to the door and he doesn't answer and they leave, and then he finds out that that was the person. So he's like, "There's no escaping it, it's gonna happen." Yeah, I kind of like the idea of it being all-- yeah, maybe one specific-- If it's one specific person it has an endpoint, like it has an end goal.
Elise: It changes the nature of it, because if there's one specific person then it's an adventure story, and if it is a forever thing, then it's a horror story because this guy will never get better and his entire life will be full of this terrible thing. So yeah, it goes very dark or it can be very upbeat, "Yay, let's finish this one thing and then I'll be free."
Hannah: And you can maybe play with a little bit of both. You can maybe have it be like mostly we're going to find this one person, then maybe God's like, but I could turn this back on anytime I need to. Almost like, "You still owe me, you're still alive."
Elise: Or the sequel.
Hannah: Or the sequel, yeah. I think I'm going to toss in the title because I think we may need a couple minutes to figure out what to do with it. Okay. So our title is "A Night on a Satellite Station in Mars," which is not our setting at all.
Jennie: We just went to Mars last time.
Hannah: We did, we just went to Mars in our last video, so I don't want to do that again. I want this to be metaphorical somehow.
Elise: What if the guy works in a virtual reality simulator?
Hannah: Okay, okay,
Elise: So people come in and--
Jennie: And then here's the other thing I thought. Is it "night," N-I-G-H-T, or is it "k-night"?
Hannah: It's with an N. Just an N.
Jennie: I got excited because we were talking about Arthurian legend and then you said "a (k)night."
Elise: So if he works at a virtual reality thing he, you know, hands out the goggles to people, and that's how he meets all of these people.
Hannah: He is also a low-budget bodyguard.
Elise: Oh, yeah.
Hannah: But was he a bodyguard and then gave that up after being attacked? Like maybe he still has physical symptoms and maybe he's not up to physical stance of being able to be a bodyguard anymore. So maybe he gets this job, virtual reality.
Elise: What if he was working security for NASA or some other sort of scientific thing that was studying Mars and has like a fake Mars set up? They do have Mars simulations to try to see if people could survive on Mars. And I mean, they're highly-- So that would be--
Hannah: And this wouldn't even necessarily need to be the setting of the entire place as long as it was the setting during a time that was thematically important. So maybe this is where he is when he gets attacked and survives the attack. And that's the night that changes everything kind of thing.
Elise: Yeah.
Hannah: So you can make that-- So he doesn't have to necessarily live in the Mars simulator or be there all the time. We don't need all the murders to happen there, because that's tricky. You'd think eventually they'd just put up a guard there and be like, "Nope." But I think that could be you know there is this one does have a singular point at which there was a before and after, a distinctive point in time. And I think at that point in time-- This is the night on the satellite station on Mars.
Jennie: This is the night where I died and talked to God and came back to life, and now my life is completely different.
Elise: Oh, I'm actually reading the intro right now to sound as weird and unrelatable as possible. "This is what happened to me. I died. I came back. I talked to God. And the whole thing happened on Mars."
Hannah: Exactly.
Jennie: Very nice.
Hannah: Yeah, it's great. That's definitely this voiceover moment.
Jennie: And then you see the camera like panning out and showing that's not actually Mars. It's a set in a room.
Hannah: Yeah, it shows him lying on the ground, bleeding everywhere.
Jennie: On Mars.
Hannah: And then he abruptly sits back up, is fine.
Elise: With a gasp.
Hannah: With a gasp, and then it pans out and he's not on Mars. So it starts off setting up, this is what happened, this is what happened, and then you're like, "Undo, undo."
Jennie: I would totally watch that based on that opening alone.
Hannah: That's a strong start there.
Elise: You know, also, I'm saying, if he keeps being a bodyguard, he's got to be the worst bodyguard ever if people around him keep dying and people around him are always being targeted by serial killers or murderers.
Hannah: You're right!
Jennie: It does say he's a low-budget bodyguard.
Elise: Very low budget.
Hannah: Very low.
Elise: Which isn't his fault, because everybody-- I mean, normally their biggest threats are, like, people are going to harass them with cameras, whereas this guy is always up against murderers.
Jennie: Oh gosh, yeah, like, "Nobody hire this guy."
Hannah: It's true. Which again, gives him an even stronger reason to "I have to get this done and find this so that I can be finished with this forever." Well, we're just about at the end of our time discussing this, but I like this. I think this is a really interesting piece. Is there any major piece that you think we're missing?
Elise: Does God keep coming back to talk to him periodically?
Hannah: That's a good question.
Elise: Is this a one time thing or does he regularly see God?
Jennie: That's a very good question. We might have to leave that up to our listeners.
Hannah: I feel like it's probably more interesting if he's just kind of dropped back off and does not talk to him again, because otherwise he could just be like, "Hey, so who's the serial killer?"
Elise: But God is enigmatic and God wants him to go on the journey. Either that or he gets messengers from God that just say, "Find Alan Schwartz."
Jennie: No, what if the messengers from God are other people who have had near death experiences? And so God keeps bringing people back just to give a message to this guy.
Hannah: Oh, interesting.
Elise: What if corpses sit up and talk to him.
Hannah: Oh my gosh!
Elise: Whenever he sees a dead person, they give him a message from God.
Jennie: Oh my gosh. That would be creepy and hilarious.
Hannah: That does speed up his knowledge of what's happening.
Elise: It's the catalyst that gets him going to the different places.
Jennie: See, now we've got an adventure horror/comedy going.
Hannah: We do. The tone of this, I think, can go in so many different ways. I think we're good. I think let's leave the rest of it up to the listeners to go in whichever direction they want. So what do we still need to know from that? What do we need them to nail down for us?
Jennie: I think we need to know what the purpose of this guy's journey is, what does God want him to do? And I think we need to know more about his person-- We haven't discussed his personality at all. We've just discussed his job. And then the various mechanics we discussed. Which one do you guys think is the one that's going to work here? Are corpses coming back to life? Is this guy good luck or bad luck? What's the side character? Who does he contact with who's going through the journey with him? Is another question.
Elise: Can we ever get close to somebody? Or is it just completely doomed?
Hannah: This is interesting. This could go so many different ways and still be the same story.
Jennie: We need Christopher Nolan on this one.
Hannah: I want two different writer submissions. I want one that goes like full comedy and one that goes like full existential horror. Because you really could. All right, fantastic. Well, before we close out today, first of all, I want to thank you, Elise, for joining us. And I want to give you a second if you would like to mention anything you would like to plug, any writing that we can find online or social media you'd like to plug for listeners. Anything you want to share?
Elise: Well, first of all, thank you for having me on. It was really fun. I enjoyed myself a lot. But secondly, if you are going to-- If you want to know the true, like the basics of Robin Hood, the way that it's been portrayed over the years, watch the show Robin of Sherwood. It is the most 80s hair-band-rific thing you will ever see in your life. But it is the one that the parodies are based on, so that is a really good basis if you want to do that. Whereas if you want to know the basics of Arthurian literature, read The Squire's Tale by Gerald Moore. It is a 12- or 13-book series and it will give you the stories of all of the knights. So you will have a great working knowledge after that.
Hannah: Fantastic. And Jennie and I will also go ahead and share a story of our own that we think our listeners should check out. Mine this week is a little bit unusual, I want to shout out the AI Dungeon app. This is an app that I found mentioned on a blog. It's based around those texts adventures that were all over the place, where you would type in the commands. Zork and those where it would guide you through a story. The way this one works is, you type in the commands and make your character move and tell your character what to do, but the text in between and the responses are all written by an artificial intelligence. So it bases some of its knowledge on stories that it's read before and on other people's things that they've set up, but a lot of it ends up getting a little bit garbled. But it's kind of fascinating to try to work together with this robot writer to guide the story to where you want. And sometimes it goes in really unexpected directions. I started one where I crafted it as being about a woman traveling the Oregon Trail. And about halfway through, the bot just announced, "You get on a bus and drive to Oregon." So sometimes it goes in unusual directions. It's very much like this podcast in that it gives you unexpected twists and turns and you have to kind of figure out how to run with them. So that's my recommendation for this week. Jennie, how about yours?
Jennie: Well, it's a new year. And I asked for book recommendations from pretty much everybody that I know and I have a list of 85 titles to read this year, so I've got a tall order ahead of me. But I read the first one on my list. It's Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear. It's a young woman starting an agency where she helps people figure stuff out, detective investigation type work, and this was the first one so it's also kind of her origin story. She's a little bit Mary Sue and I found the writing awkward in places, but it was a very pleasant read. So if you're into detective stories, this one's set in about World War One and the aftermath in the 20s. So it was a very nice story and it was a pleasant read, and it's the first in a series, so you should check that one out.
Hannah: All right, fantastic. And that is our episode. As a reminder, you can find us every other Thursday wherever you get your podcasts.
Jennie: Follow us on Twitter @writethispod and if you've been inspired by this episode and have questions or comments or a story or anything else email us at somebodywritethis@gmail.com We would love to hear from you.
Hannah: We will be back with another episode in two weeks. See you then.
Jennie: And as they say, cabbage cooked twice is death.
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