For Dragon ball fans, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I’m not speaking at all about fusion (boggarts or not). Neither a sudden hair colour change to bright yellow with an accelerated increase in muscle mass or volume as if magical doping is going on, Not the least about Serena using the moon scepter to change her school uniform into something sexier. Nein!
TRANSFORMATION IN HUMAN TERMS
True it is the change I’m talking about takes a faster time in plot than the time it usually takes in real life. Who has the time and will to assist to the whole process? Life, in spite of all the modern gadgets and what not; is more or less the same it was 5,000 years ago1. Perhaps we have skipped in the priest chaman prying for us in each human stage… Forget it, we have the smartphone telling us we’re not children anymore thus we are millenials, middle aged, chavorucos2 or the urban tribe we belong to without even asking. WE ARE STILL THE SAME SAPIENS INSIDE OUR SKULLS.
THE MOMENT IT CHANGE
Therefore, we are born, we grow up and we die. We change. We get transformed. Welcome to the oldest horror story of all, the one of life3. (Nonetheless this plot has nothing to do with horror itself). Transformation plot’s focus is the moment everything changes, Its media res4 is to move from a meaningful state in a character to a different one. How does this person in particular react to this? We concentrate in the nature of the change.
DIFFERENT CHARACTERS, DIFFERENT REACTIONS
In My sister lives on the mantelpiece by Annabel Pitcher; both parents experience the grieve of losing a daughter in a completely different way.The mother decides to bury half her share of ashes to have a place where to go on a call. She never goes and ends up on a yacht trip (new boyfriend’s yacht) around the world. Whilst the father, has his half on the mantelpiece to free her spirit but never lets the container out of his sight. The remaining kids live with him.This is why we read the book. It ain’t spectacular (in terms of explosions, magic or monsters). It is the change the kids suffer along that gets transmitted onto the father about the violent and meaningless death as a human event what is interesting.Who am I? Where do I go? What am I? Is the discovery something so horrible? Is it dull? Do we change to better? Is it that bigger power implies more responsibilities5?
TO BE CONTINUED
- We are after all, still slaves to wheat, rice and corn. Not like 10,000 years ago when we would freely move around hunting and scavenging. We are still slaves to the hope of future. ↩︎
- I don’t know if the word is extensive to the rest of LATAM but in Mexico it is used to tag someone my age and who, would ambition to roam the roads on a motorcycle instead of owning the safe, spacious SUV. ↩︎
- Being alive is terrifying…sometimes. ↩︎
- In the middle of the action if this is your first time coming upon the word and Latin ain’t your best language (I didn’t study it either). ↩︎
- Ronald B. Tobías (20 master plots) says in great truth of life mode: to become wiser is to become sourer… At the moment I had no will to get myself into sadness over my own words. Anyways, I don’t know. ↩︎
