The Merlin Stewart Story (Episode 9) Transcript
The audio version of this episode can be found here.
Hannah: The college's most popular girl, who is having difficulty in her marriage, has to help a US government agent and realize the importance of a volcano.
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 we brainstorm how that could be a thing somebody might want to write. I'm Hannah.
Jennie: And I'm Jennie. And to help us with our brainstorming today we have a guest. Welcome, Randy.
Randy: Hello.
Hannah: Hi. We're so happy you could be here. We've been trying to get you on the podcast for a very long time.
Randy: I know. Sorry.
Hannah: Of all the people I know, you have some of the most widely varied tastes in art. You like a little bit of everything. You like movies and you like music and you like theater and you like TV, and it really is a little bit of all of it. And so I'm going to ask you, if you could only choose one of these art forms, if some terrible horrible apocalypse happened, and somehow every art form but one was wiped off the map, which one would you choose to keep?
Randy: Oh, I think I would have to choose music. I need music in my life every day, in some way or another.
Hannah: I think I would probably do that too. But it is a tough choice. I'd be back and forth on that. So yeah, just to give us a sense of your musical taste, what are some of your favorite genres or artists?
Randy: Well, big Southern rock, classic rock kind of guy. That's what I grew up with, like Lynyrd Skynyrd and Creedence Clearwater Revival and things like that. I also listen to old-school country music, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson is the man. You know, I even like some newer things. Panic At The Disco is growing on me because they play it at work all the time. And there's music soundtracks, movie soundtracks are so good these days. It's like its own new form of classical music.
Hannah: One of the big things right now on Broadway is jukebox musicals.
Jennie: Like Mamma Mia, one of those.
Hannah: If you were going to choose an artist to make a jukebox musical out of, who would you choose and why?
Randy: You know, I would have to say, CCR, Creedence Clearwater Revival, have a big story. They got screwed over by their manager really badly back in the day and led to decades long litigation between them and John Fogerty, the singer, wouldn't sing CCR songs for the longest time. But now it finally got resolved and now he's doing them again.
Hannah: I love anything that could tell me any kind of story and so I love songs that tells stories and I love songs that convey a narrative and make that whole thing happen. I know that as well as besides just listening to music, you like to play it a little bit as well. Tell us a little bit about that journey.
Randy: A little bit. I've been playing bass for a few years, since I was, you know, in high school, off and on playing it. And I decided I wanted to get better at playing guitar. So I went out and bought one and it's really nice and I'm taking lessons. I'm the 42 year old guy taking lessons at Guitar Center with, you know, sixth graders.
Hannah: So when you consume art, when you watch movies or listen to music, a lot of it, they have differences but the process of consuming it is often very similar. But I know that as well as playing music, you've also done writing and that kind of thing, but I'm curious about how that differs from other art creation that you've done. What is easier about it? What's more difficult about it? What do you really like about playing music as opposed to writing or drawing or acting or something like that?
Randy: Well, I mean, with learning music, you know, there's a set of rules you have to go by and forms to learn how to play the right chords, and things like that. With writing, I mean, I guess there's rules too, grammar.
Jennie: "I guess there's rules. They're more guidelines, really."
Randy: Right, right. So a lot of music is taking what other people have done and putting your own spin on it, honestly. Writing, you can just come up with something new every time. You can invent your own new genre if you if you feel like it.
Hannah: Do you like any experimental stuff? What's something that you enjoy that does push those boundaries a little bit, push those rules? What do you think?
Randy: As far as music? Gosh. David Bowie and Prince. I mean it's weird that you know me, you know, a Southern rock guy, loves Prince, but I do. He was just an innovator who made something unique each time he put a record out. And you know whether it worked or failed, he just worked hard at it.
Hannah: I like getting to chat a little bit about different other art forms and how they kind of intersect. So we are going to go ahead and we're going to start transitioning into talking about our plot, but I vote that we have you play us a little something, give us a musical transition into our plot discussion.
Jennie: Yeah.
Randy: Okey doke.
Jennie: Show off your guitar learning.
Randy: All right. This is not going to be the best. This is the lead riff from Smoke on the Water by Deep Purple, which has a fun story, real quick, to it. They were playing in Germany, or wherever Montreux is. I forget where that is. I think Switzerland? I don't know. But where there's a big jazz festival and they were going to record at this concert hall but Frank Zappa and the Mothers were playing there and accidentally burned the place to the ground.
Jennie: What?
Randy: Yeah.
Jennie: Whoops
Randy: Yeah, so they saw the smoke on the water and the fire in the sky so yeah.
Jennie: Wow.
Randy: Okay, cool. It's a little like this.
Hannah: There's our transition. We need more musical transitions between segments on our podcast. (Randy plays more.) That'll be our transition from plotting to closing. Well, we're so glad you're here and sharing your musical take on things. That's really cool. We are going to jump into our plot and we're going to figure out what to do with it. So our plot, as a reminder, it is, "The college's most popular girl who is having difficulty in her marriage has to help a US government agent and realize the importance of a volcano."
Randy: Yes, those are important.
Hannah: Where do we even start with this? There are so many factors.
Hannah: I feel like it holds together until that last "realize the importance of..." You could totally have this young woman who was popular, got married obviously very young, in college--
Jennie: So probably newlywed.
Hannah: It would be very easy to come up with something that was going wrong there and then have her need to help a government agent for some reason. That all kind of holds together. The importance of a volcano section is where it gets very tricky.
Jennie: Right, like, okay, so my first question is, is this a specific volcano? Or is this like, the appreciation of the idea of a volcano?
Randy: It makes me think of Joe Versus the Volcano.
Hannah: Yeah, and I'm curious whether the realizing the importance of a volcano is more helpful to the government agent assisting, or whether it solves her marriage somehow. Because that's two different aspects. Like I'm assuming that her marriage and the government agent issue are not connected, but the volcano helps one or maybe both of them somehow.
Jennie: She could be married to a government agent.
Randy: That's what I was saying.
Hannah: Okay, so does she helps the same government agent or is it like a colleague? Because the phrase is real weird if it's the same person, but maybe like the colleague comes to her and is like, "Hey, your husband is doing something funky."
Jennie: Or your wife.
Hannah: Oh, man, maybe she has to help like, investigate her spouse.
Randy: Yes.
Hannah: One of their colleagues comes to her and is like, "Hey."
Jennie: Maybe that's why the marriage is difficult. One of the reasons like, "Oh, nothing Honey, I'm just spying on you."
Hannah: Maybe that's why she agrees to help out. Maybe it's a thing where they've been gone a lot. They're not as attentive to her as they used to be. And she thinks, "Oh, maybe they are in trouble in trouble."
Jennie: In trouble or causing trouble.
Hannah: About to betray the US government.
Jennie: There's obviously hidden life in here somewhere.
Hannah: Gives her kind of a reason to go with the government agent and believe them because things are already kind of rocky and it kind of makes sense for her.
Jennie: Like we said this all makes sense.
Randy: Maybe it takes place in a villain's hideout inside a volcano, very James Bondy.
Jennie: Off-shore uncharted island.
Hannah: Maybe there's a supervillain lair in a volcano?
Randy: Yes.
Hannah: I guess I'm going back and forth. It depends a little bit on whether the college girl's spouse actually is a bad guy or not.
Jennie: I think we've just entered a Bond film.
Hannah: I want a Bond film where the college's most popular girl is James Bond.
Randy: Yes, definitely.
Jennie: Right. Or where the story actually centers on the Bond girl for once so she's not just--
Hannah: There you go. Does the final confrontation maybe happen in the volcano?
Jennie: That seems more coincidental than important to me. She needs to realize the importance.
Randy: If they discover that's where he's hiding... The importance of the volcano is that that's where the evil person is hiding or whatever.
Hannah: Realizing the importance, maybe it's like the volcan has-- I mean, volcanoes are hard to miss but maybe it's been like in the background. Like maybe it's something that has been there but hasn't been set up as significant, and then they realize that this entire thing is happening out of the volcano, or maybe--
Jennie: What if the volcano is first off, not like the the iconic, exploding active volcano. But what if it's either a dormant volcano so like, it's basically just a mountain now but you say it's a volcano. Or it's a symbolic volcano. Like metaphorical or it's the the logo of an organization or something like a secret code like she keeps seeing these flyers with this image of a volcano on it or somebody sends an email and it's got that in the bottom corner. Okay. See where I'm going with this?
Hannah: They see the significance of it, what it means about the rest of this crime syndicate.
Jennie: Right.
Hannah: So the volcano is associated with the villains and they have to solve it and the volcano is like, the clue that gets them there in the end, whether it's the symbol that's on "Here, come join our evil group" flyers.
Jennie: Right. Handing them out on the street corner. "Join Volcano!"
Hannah: It's the secret symbols that they start seeing that guide them to the ending.
Jennie: I think if that's the case that also needs to be misleading, like they think it's for something else. Like maybe a religious cult.
Hannah: Right. Maybe there's an actual volcano as well. And so it's a tourist thing. You can have this interesting thing where it's just part of the culture of the town, is that tourists are always coming and hanging out and wanting to come see the volcano. And so there are signs everywhere for the volcano, and some of these specifically are not actually about that. So that would be a really interesting way for it to just be constantly in the background where the tourists are always wanting to talk to them about this. And everything is volcano themed, because that's their big draw. And they start noticing that some of these, maybe like the blue volcano signs means something else. And then if you wanted, you could still have the super villain in the volcano as well, in a secret place where the tourists don't go.
Jennie: In the tunnels underneath Volcano Land.
Hannah: I'm just picturing this sort of humorously, "Oh my gosh, what do we do now" thing where as they're trying to find the supervillain and ferret them out and do what they need to, that they accidentally are leading tourists along there as well. There are all these people who are just taking photos and you're like, "No, go away, you can't be here."
Jennie: "This is not part of the tour."
Hannah: "Not a reenactment of anything."
Jennie: And of course, they're foreign tourists to the area so they don't speak the language.
Jennie: So much difficulty being like, "Do not be part of this."
Jennie: And so you get the high speed chase around the tour buses.
Hannah: I am going to toss in the title, which is not as terrible as it has been, but it does maybe pinpoint a character. So the title is "The Merlin Stewart Story."
Randy: The Merlin Stewart Story. Okay.
Hannah: The Merlin Stewart Story. So Merlin Stewart is a character whose story is being told here. So I don't know if that means that maybe it's an origin story for somebody. Maybe Merlin Stewart is the next James Bond.
Jennie: I think it's the villain, only because I think like villain origin stories are very big right now. You know, like, we have Joker out and with today's storytellingwe're doing the multi layered thing, where like, the bad guys aren't totally bad and the good guys aren't totally good. What if Merlin Stewart is like this weedy little guy who nobody ever paid any attention to? Yeah, okay, that's very cliche, but you know what I mean.
Hannah: Hiding in a volcano.
Jennie: And so the whole time that people are watching the movie or reading the book, they're going okay, well, the title says Merlin Stewart, who is it? And then they find out it's this guy who's been in the background all this time.
Randy: Reminds me of the origin story of Cobra from GI Joe. Cobra Commander was a used car salesman.
Jennie: I did not know that.
Randy: It's very, very complicated and silly.
Hannah: Watch out for those used car salesmen.
Randy: Exactly.
Hannah: Framing it as the Merlin Stewart story indicates that-- A lot of times that framing is used for people that the audience knows. Like an established character. That's clearly not the case here. Merlin Stewart is not anybody that the audience knows.
Jennie: Okay. So the audience knows Merlin Stewart. They don't know he's the bad guy until close to the end. It's two separate things. And this is what's going to tie it together. The popular college girl is studying journalism. So she is already trying to find-- Maybe it's even just like a human interest story. And so she starts interviewing and one of the people she interviews is Merlin Stewart, right? And then they find out that-- This is where the government Agent comes in because like, "Oh, hey, I noticed you're interviewing this guy, he's a person of interest. Can you keep an eye on him or find out this about him?" And so she gets more into it and is helping the agent and then follows him-- Like maybe he's the founder of Volcano Park. And so that's where they have to go. But then they find out that he's it's actually a front for whatever his evil thing is. Am I totally out of left field here?
Hannah: My only concern is that her marriage has disappeared.
Jennie: Well, she was in a difficult marriage. Maybe she ran away from it. I don't know.
Randy: Maybe her husband brings her in on it. Like he is the guy who says, "Hey, I saw you doing this." What you were saying.
Hannah: Yeah, my only qualm with that is that if you're going to mention the difficult marriage--
Jennie: It needs to be more of a--
Hannah: Maybe they end up solving it together. Maybe they do that and the volcano becomes their second home. You could make this like a-- Oh, what's the movie? Like a True Lies kind of thing where it becomes like a husband and wife or wife and wife team solving and taking down Merlin Stewart, who they don't know is Merlin Stewart until the end. And maybe their initial difficulties is partly because maybe the spouse isn't fully on board with it, or maybe the spouse thinks she's getting caught up in a conspiracy theory.
Jennie: Or maybe the spouse is working for Merlin Stewart.
Hannah: Maybe, and then we end up with that at the end. I think that is a decent way to tie those together. And that can be fun.
Jennie: This is kind of fun. It could go really wacky while still being like adventurous and quasi-realistic. Like it could be an adventure comedy or it could-- I don't see it being incredibly serious, like maybe a Bond spoof.
Hannah: Yeah, it feels Bond-y or Indiana Jones-y.
Jennie: Yeah. Yeah,
Hannah: That kind of thing. That's the kind of vibe I'm getting out of this. Good. We are just about at time to wrap up the discussion of the of the plot. Is there anything major that we're missing before we toss it out to our listeners to do whatever they want with it?
Jennie: Well, the questions for our listeners that we haven't answered-- We don't know much about the characters themselves, their personalities, what they're into, their names even, except for Merlin Stewart. We don't know which government the agent is from.
Hannah: No, it is U.S.
Jennie: Oh, it is US government? He could be a rogue agent and therefore not working for the US, whatever floats your boat. But like the volcano, there's not that many volcanoes in the US. So you'd have to set it in Hawaii, or it would have to be international. So where is the setting and how does a US college student get there? Yeah, so I think those are questions that need to be answered by the story eventually, just not necessarily by us.
Hannah: All right. I like that. Before we close out today, we'll do what we always do. And we'll take a second to each shout out a story we think our listeners should check out. I think mine this week-- I just finished reading Jacob Have I Loved by Katherine Paterson for the first time, which is has been around forever. I knew the name certainly when I was growing up, but I never actually read it. And I really, really liked it. It's a YA novel about a girl growing up on an island as a twin and a lot of it is dealing with her feelings of constantly being passed over for her sister. And she's a really relatable narrator and a very interesting character. And it's a story that's so easy to connect to. The ending rushes things a little bit and I'm not sure-- I'm still sitting with it, trying to figure out whether I like how it ended or not. But most of the book was so so so so engaging that I have no qualms about recommending it here. So if you haven't had a chance to read it, I highly recommend Jacob Have I Loved by Katherine Paterson. I'm going to toss it over to Jennie. What would you like to recommend for us this week?
Jennie: This week, I'm really into medical dramas on TV. I have just introduced my roommate to Grey's Anatomy. Now, I'm not saying that-- Okay, this is not the best show ever made, and it is definitely not everybody's taste. But if you like medical dramas, the thing that I appreciate about the show the most is the long character arc. The show has been going for 16 seasons, and there are a few characters who have been there the entire time and their lives change in a in a way that mimics real life in a way that I don't see in most other shows really. They develop as characters and they expand and they grow and it's still going strong because of that quality of the show. So if you ever feel like checking that out, that's is a show that I recommend.
Hannah: All right, Randy, it's up to you. What would you like to recommend for our listeners?
Randy: I just finished reading Squirrel Girl Volume One, a graphic novel from Marvel. Squirrel Girl is a mutant girl with all the powers of a squirrel and all the powers of a girl. She is very confident in herself and always tries to see the better part of everyone and defeats Kraven the Hunter and Galactus and Dr. Doom in very unique ways.
Hannah: Thank you so much. Randy, before we go, is there anything you'd like to plug yourself? Any social media you want to share with our listeners? Anything you'd like to toss out there for yourself?
Randy: If you want to follow me on Twitter, that's cool. What is my Twitter name? I think it's @r_w_kirkpatrick.
Hannah: Awesome. Thank you so much for joining us. I'm glad it finally worked out.
Randy: It's been great. We have to do it again. I'll play a better riff next time.
Hannah: Every time you'll just have a different new riff for us. Awesome. I love it. Well, folks, that's our episode. As a reminder, you can find us every other Thursday wherever you get your podcasts.
Jennie: Follow us on Twitter at @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'd love to hear from you
Hannah: We'll be back with another episode in two weeks. We'll see you then.
Jennie: And as they say, the sight of a horse makes the traveler lame.
Hannah: The college's most popular girl, who is having difficulty in her marriage, has to help a US government agent and realize the importance of a volcano.
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 we brainstorm how that could be a thing somebody might want to write. I'm Hannah.
Jennie: And I'm Jennie. And to help us with our brainstorming today we have a guest. Welcome, Randy.
Randy: Hello.
Hannah: Hi. We're so happy you could be here. We've been trying to get you on the podcast for a very long time.
Randy: I know. Sorry.
Hannah: Of all the people I know, you have some of the most widely varied tastes in art. You like a little bit of everything. You like movies and you like music and you like theater and you like TV, and it really is a little bit of all of it. And so I'm going to ask you, if you could only choose one of these art forms, if some terrible horrible apocalypse happened, and somehow every art form but one was wiped off the map, which one would you choose to keep?
Randy: Oh, I think I would have to choose music. I need music in my life every day, in some way or another.
Hannah: I think I would probably do that too. But it is a tough choice. I'd be back and forth on that. So yeah, just to give us a sense of your musical taste, what are some of your favorite genres or artists?
Randy: Well, big Southern rock, classic rock kind of guy. That's what I grew up with, like Lynyrd Skynyrd and Creedence Clearwater Revival and things like that. I also listen to old-school country music, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson is the man. You know, I even like some newer things. Panic At The Disco is growing on me because they play it at work all the time. And there's music soundtracks, movie soundtracks are so good these days. It's like its own new form of classical music.
Hannah: One of the big things right now on Broadway is jukebox musicals.
Jennie: Like Mamma Mia, one of those.
Hannah: If you were going to choose an artist to make a jukebox musical out of, who would you choose and why?
Randy: You know, I would have to say, CCR, Creedence Clearwater Revival, have a big story. They got screwed over by their manager really badly back in the day and led to decades long litigation between them and John Fogerty, the singer, wouldn't sing CCR songs for the longest time. But now it finally got resolved and now he's doing them again.
Hannah: I love anything that could tell me any kind of story and so I love songs that tells stories and I love songs that convey a narrative and make that whole thing happen. I know that as well as besides just listening to music, you like to play it a little bit as well. Tell us a little bit about that journey.
Randy: A little bit. I've been playing bass for a few years, since I was, you know, in high school, off and on playing it. And I decided I wanted to get better at playing guitar. So I went out and bought one and it's really nice and I'm taking lessons. I'm the 42 year old guy taking lessons at Guitar Center with, you know, sixth graders.
Hannah: So when you consume art, when you watch movies or listen to music, a lot of it, they have differences but the process of consuming it is often very similar. But I know that as well as playing music, you've also done writing and that kind of thing, but I'm curious about how that differs from other art creation that you've done. What is easier about it? What's more difficult about it? What do you really like about playing music as opposed to writing or drawing or acting or something like that?
Randy: Well, I mean, with learning music, you know, there's a set of rules you have to go by and forms to learn how to play the right chords, and things like that. With writing, I mean, I guess there's rules too, grammar.
Jennie: "I guess there's rules. They're more guidelines, really."
Randy: Right, right. So a lot of music is taking what other people have done and putting your own spin on it, honestly. Writing, you can just come up with something new every time. You can invent your own new genre if you if you feel like it.
Hannah: Do you like any experimental stuff? What's something that you enjoy that does push those boundaries a little bit, push those rules? What do you think?
Randy: As far as music? Gosh. David Bowie and Prince. I mean it's weird that you know me, you know, a Southern rock guy, loves Prince, but I do. He was just an innovator who made something unique each time he put a record out. And you know whether it worked or failed, he just worked hard at it.
Hannah: I like getting to chat a little bit about different other art forms and how they kind of intersect. So we are going to go ahead and we're going to start transitioning into talking about our plot, but I vote that we have you play us a little something, give us a musical transition into our plot discussion.
Jennie: Yeah.
Randy: Okey doke.
Jennie: Show off your guitar learning.
Randy: All right. This is not going to be the best. This is the lead riff from Smoke on the Water by Deep Purple, which has a fun story, real quick, to it. They were playing in Germany, or wherever Montreux is. I forget where that is. I think Switzerland? I don't know. But where there's a big jazz festival and they were going to record at this concert hall but Frank Zappa and the Mothers were playing there and accidentally burned the place to the ground.
Jennie: What?
Randy: Yeah.
Jennie: Whoops
Randy: Yeah, so they saw the smoke on the water and the fire in the sky so yeah.
Jennie: Wow.
Randy: Okay, cool. It's a little like this.
Hannah: There's our transition. We need more musical transitions between segments on our podcast. (Randy plays more.) That'll be our transition from plotting to closing. Well, we're so glad you're here and sharing your musical take on things. That's really cool. We are going to jump into our plot and we're going to figure out what to do with it. So our plot, as a reminder, it is, "The college's most popular girl who is having difficulty in her marriage has to help a US government agent and realize the importance of a volcano."
Randy: Yes, those are important.
Hannah: Where do we even start with this? There are so many factors.
Hannah: I feel like it holds together until that last "realize the importance of..." You could totally have this young woman who was popular, got married obviously very young, in college--
Jennie: So probably newlywed.
Hannah: It would be very easy to come up with something that was going wrong there and then have her need to help a government agent for some reason. That all kind of holds together. The importance of a volcano section is where it gets very tricky.
Jennie: Right, like, okay, so my first question is, is this a specific volcano? Or is this like, the appreciation of the idea of a volcano?
Randy: It makes me think of Joe Versus the Volcano.
Hannah: Yeah, and I'm curious whether the realizing the importance of a volcano is more helpful to the government agent assisting, or whether it solves her marriage somehow. Because that's two different aspects. Like I'm assuming that her marriage and the government agent issue are not connected, but the volcano helps one or maybe both of them somehow.
Jennie: She could be married to a government agent.
Randy: That's what I was saying.
Hannah: Okay, so does she helps the same government agent or is it like a colleague? Because the phrase is real weird if it's the same person, but maybe like the colleague comes to her and is like, "Hey, your husband is doing something funky."
Jennie: Or your wife.
Hannah: Oh, man, maybe she has to help like, investigate her spouse.
Randy: Yes.
Hannah: One of their colleagues comes to her and is like, "Hey."
Jennie: Maybe that's why the marriage is difficult. One of the reasons like, "Oh, nothing Honey, I'm just spying on you."
Hannah: Maybe that's why she agrees to help out. Maybe it's a thing where they've been gone a lot. They're not as attentive to her as they used to be. And she thinks, "Oh, maybe they are in trouble in trouble."
Jennie: In trouble or causing trouble.
Hannah: About to betray the US government.
Jennie: There's obviously hidden life in here somewhere.
Hannah: Gives her kind of a reason to go with the government agent and believe them because things are already kind of rocky and it kind of makes sense for her.
Jennie: Like we said this all makes sense.
Randy: Maybe it takes place in a villain's hideout inside a volcano, very James Bondy.
Jennie: Off-shore uncharted island.
Hannah: Maybe there's a supervillain lair in a volcano?
Randy: Yes.
Hannah: I guess I'm going back and forth. It depends a little bit on whether the college girl's spouse actually is a bad guy or not.
Jennie: I think we've just entered a Bond film.
Hannah: I want a Bond film where the college's most popular girl is James Bond.
Randy: Yes, definitely.
Jennie: Right. Or where the story actually centers on the Bond girl for once so she's not just--
Hannah: There you go. Does the final confrontation maybe happen in the volcano?
Jennie: That seems more coincidental than important to me. She needs to realize the importance.
Randy: If they discover that's where he's hiding... The importance of the volcano is that that's where the evil person is hiding or whatever.
Hannah: Realizing the importance, maybe it's like the volcan has-- I mean, volcanoes are hard to miss but maybe it's been like in the background. Like maybe it's something that has been there but hasn't been set up as significant, and then they realize that this entire thing is happening out of the volcano, or maybe--
Jennie: What if the volcano is first off, not like the the iconic, exploding active volcano. But what if it's either a dormant volcano so like, it's basically just a mountain now but you say it's a volcano. Or it's a symbolic volcano. Like metaphorical or it's the the logo of an organization or something like a secret code like she keeps seeing these flyers with this image of a volcano on it or somebody sends an email and it's got that in the bottom corner. Okay. See where I'm going with this?
Hannah: They see the significance of it, what it means about the rest of this crime syndicate.
Jennie: Right.
Hannah: So the volcano is associated with the villains and they have to solve it and the volcano is like, the clue that gets them there in the end, whether it's the symbol that's on "Here, come join our evil group" flyers.
Jennie: Right. Handing them out on the street corner. "Join Volcano!"
Hannah: It's the secret symbols that they start seeing that guide them to the ending.
Jennie: I think if that's the case that also needs to be misleading, like they think it's for something else. Like maybe a religious cult.
Hannah: Right. Maybe there's an actual volcano as well. And so it's a tourist thing. You can have this interesting thing where it's just part of the culture of the town, is that tourists are always coming and hanging out and wanting to come see the volcano. And so there are signs everywhere for the volcano, and some of these specifically are not actually about that. So that would be a really interesting way for it to just be constantly in the background where the tourists are always wanting to talk to them about this. And everything is volcano themed, because that's their big draw. And they start noticing that some of these, maybe like the blue volcano signs means something else. And then if you wanted, you could still have the super villain in the volcano as well, in a secret place where the tourists don't go.
Jennie: In the tunnels underneath Volcano Land.
Hannah: I'm just picturing this sort of humorously, "Oh my gosh, what do we do now" thing where as they're trying to find the supervillain and ferret them out and do what they need to, that they accidentally are leading tourists along there as well. There are all these people who are just taking photos and you're like, "No, go away, you can't be here."
Jennie: "This is not part of the tour."
Hannah: "Not a reenactment of anything."
Jennie: And of course, they're foreign tourists to the area so they don't speak the language.
Jennie: So much difficulty being like, "Do not be part of this."
Jennie: And so you get the high speed chase around the tour buses.
Hannah: I am going to toss in the title, which is not as terrible as it has been, but it does maybe pinpoint a character. So the title is "The Merlin Stewart Story."
Randy: The Merlin Stewart Story. Okay.
Hannah: The Merlin Stewart Story. So Merlin Stewart is a character whose story is being told here. So I don't know if that means that maybe it's an origin story for somebody. Maybe Merlin Stewart is the next James Bond.
Jennie: I think it's the villain, only because I think like villain origin stories are very big right now. You know, like, we have Joker out and with today's storytellingwe're doing the multi layered thing, where like, the bad guys aren't totally bad and the good guys aren't totally good. What if Merlin Stewart is like this weedy little guy who nobody ever paid any attention to? Yeah, okay, that's very cliche, but you know what I mean.
Hannah: Hiding in a volcano.
Jennie: And so the whole time that people are watching the movie or reading the book, they're going okay, well, the title says Merlin Stewart, who is it? And then they find out it's this guy who's been in the background all this time.
Randy: Reminds me of the origin story of Cobra from GI Joe. Cobra Commander was a used car salesman.
Jennie: I did not know that.
Randy: It's very, very complicated and silly.
Hannah: Watch out for those used car salesmen.
Randy: Exactly.
Hannah: Framing it as the Merlin Stewart story indicates that-- A lot of times that framing is used for people that the audience knows. Like an established character. That's clearly not the case here. Merlin Stewart is not anybody that the audience knows.
Jennie: Okay. So the audience knows Merlin Stewart. They don't know he's the bad guy until close to the end. It's two separate things. And this is what's going to tie it together. The popular college girl is studying journalism. So she is already trying to find-- Maybe it's even just like a human interest story. And so she starts interviewing and one of the people she interviews is Merlin Stewart, right? And then they find out that-- This is where the government Agent comes in because like, "Oh, hey, I noticed you're interviewing this guy, he's a person of interest. Can you keep an eye on him or find out this about him?" And so she gets more into it and is helping the agent and then follows him-- Like maybe he's the founder of Volcano Park. And so that's where they have to go. But then they find out that he's it's actually a front for whatever his evil thing is. Am I totally out of left field here?
Hannah: My only concern is that her marriage has disappeared.
Jennie: Well, she was in a difficult marriage. Maybe she ran away from it. I don't know.
Randy: Maybe her husband brings her in on it. Like he is the guy who says, "Hey, I saw you doing this." What you were saying.
Hannah: Yeah, my only qualm with that is that if you're going to mention the difficult marriage--
Jennie: It needs to be more of a--
Hannah: Maybe they end up solving it together. Maybe they do that and the volcano becomes their second home. You could make this like a-- Oh, what's the movie? Like a True Lies kind of thing where it becomes like a husband and wife or wife and wife team solving and taking down Merlin Stewart, who they don't know is Merlin Stewart until the end. And maybe their initial difficulties is partly because maybe the spouse isn't fully on board with it, or maybe the spouse thinks she's getting caught up in a conspiracy theory.
Jennie: Or maybe the spouse is working for Merlin Stewart.
Hannah: Maybe, and then we end up with that at the end. I think that is a decent way to tie those together. And that can be fun.
Jennie: This is kind of fun. It could go really wacky while still being like adventurous and quasi-realistic. Like it could be an adventure comedy or it could-- I don't see it being incredibly serious, like maybe a Bond spoof.
Hannah: Yeah, it feels Bond-y or Indiana Jones-y.
Jennie: Yeah. Yeah,
Hannah: That kind of thing. That's the kind of vibe I'm getting out of this. Good. We are just about at time to wrap up the discussion of the of the plot. Is there anything major that we're missing before we toss it out to our listeners to do whatever they want with it?
Jennie: Well, the questions for our listeners that we haven't answered-- We don't know much about the characters themselves, their personalities, what they're into, their names even, except for Merlin Stewart. We don't know which government the agent is from.
Hannah: No, it is U.S.
Jennie: Oh, it is US government? He could be a rogue agent and therefore not working for the US, whatever floats your boat. But like the volcano, there's not that many volcanoes in the US. So you'd have to set it in Hawaii, or it would have to be international. So where is the setting and how does a US college student get there? Yeah, so I think those are questions that need to be answered by the story eventually, just not necessarily by us.
Hannah: All right. I like that. Before we close out today, we'll do what we always do. And we'll take a second to each shout out a story we think our listeners should check out. I think mine this week-- I just finished reading Jacob Have I Loved by Katherine Paterson for the first time, which is has been around forever. I knew the name certainly when I was growing up, but I never actually read it. And I really, really liked it. It's a YA novel about a girl growing up on an island as a twin and a lot of it is dealing with her feelings of constantly being passed over for her sister. And she's a really relatable narrator and a very interesting character. And it's a story that's so easy to connect to. The ending rushes things a little bit and I'm not sure-- I'm still sitting with it, trying to figure out whether I like how it ended or not. But most of the book was so so so so engaging that I have no qualms about recommending it here. So if you haven't had a chance to read it, I highly recommend Jacob Have I Loved by Katherine Paterson. I'm going to toss it over to Jennie. What would you like to recommend for us this week?
Jennie: This week, I'm really into medical dramas on TV. I have just introduced my roommate to Grey's Anatomy. Now, I'm not saying that-- Okay, this is not the best show ever made, and it is definitely not everybody's taste. But if you like medical dramas, the thing that I appreciate about the show the most is the long character arc. The show has been going for 16 seasons, and there are a few characters who have been there the entire time and their lives change in a in a way that mimics real life in a way that I don't see in most other shows really. They develop as characters and they expand and they grow and it's still going strong because of that quality of the show. So if you ever feel like checking that out, that's is a show that I recommend.
Hannah: All right, Randy, it's up to you. What would you like to recommend for our listeners?
Randy: I just finished reading Squirrel Girl Volume One, a graphic novel from Marvel. Squirrel Girl is a mutant girl with all the powers of a squirrel and all the powers of a girl. She is very confident in herself and always tries to see the better part of everyone and defeats Kraven the Hunter and Galactus and Dr. Doom in very unique ways.
Hannah: Thank you so much. Randy, before we go, is there anything you'd like to plug yourself? Any social media you want to share with our listeners? Anything you'd like to toss out there for yourself?
Randy: If you want to follow me on Twitter, that's cool. What is my Twitter name? I think it's @r_w_kirkpatrick.
Hannah: Awesome. Thank you so much for joining us. I'm glad it finally worked out.
Randy: It's been great. We have to do it again. I'll play a better riff next time.
Hannah: Every time you'll just have a different new riff for us. Awesome. I love it. Well, folks, that's our episode. As a reminder, you can find us every other Thursday wherever you get your podcasts.
Jennie: Follow us on Twitter at @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'd love to hear from you
Hannah: We'll be back with another episode in two weeks. We'll see you then.
Jennie: And as they say, the sight of a horse makes the traveler lame.
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