(As I write this, I’m eating a delicious beef stick from Morelli’s. I’m not sure I can ever have Jack Links Beef Jerky again.)

A few weeks ago, I wrote about a Mexican market that had a restaurant inside. This is almost the exact opposite: an Italian market without a restaurant, but with a lot of alcohol.

Morelli’s opened in 1915, when you could sell food and alcohol without a fancy license. As their business continued, their business model turned more to alcohol, both imported and domestic. Since their business was so old, they were grandfathered into the new rules. Businesses now can’t sell alcohol and food in the same store (which is why Cub Foods here has a separate store-front for wine and spirits). As long as Morelli’s keeps selling food and alcohol, they can keep their unique business.

Inside, you are immediately aware of the meats. Like a bakery smells of fresh bread and a candy store smells of candy, this place smells like meat. There are sliced meats, big steaks, bulk ground beef (cheaper than the big grocery store, BTW), and tasty beef sticks (as I mentioned I am eating). Oh, and bacon. Breakfast is going to be good.

Besides the fresh meat counter, there’s not much other food. Various noodles, olive oil, and other Italian staples are available. There’s some Morelli’s brand spaghetti sauce, which I’m sure will be tasty as well. But then there’s the alcohol.

Morelli’s bills itself as “Discount Liquor”, and they aren’t kidding. There’s standard brands at good prices, but there’s also large boxes of $2 wine. It’s not quite the Costco of alcohol, but this is not the kind of place that would have wine tastings.

Overall, it’s not a place worth road-tripping to (unlike the various craft soda shops outside the Twin Cities), but if you live near Payne and Tedesco, I recommend getting some discount tasty meat or take-and-bake pizza.

Whether it’s playing games like Dungeons and Dragons, writing stories or movies, or simply appreciating books and movies already written, I’m a sucker for character development. I might go into more detail about each of these points in later posts, but I will attempt to lay out here some of the major character archetypes. And I mean “major”. These will be very broad, so they should apply to the media you are enjoying or creating.

Mary Sue/Gary Stu

I put the Mary Sue first because it is the pratfall of many a writer, myself included. Let me start with an example. When I started writing my superhero universe (which is in desperate need of a fifth or sixth rewrite), the main-est of the characters was born in my hometown, looked like me (except he was in shape), held a high position in the Boy Scouts that I had tried to obtain, was immediately made the leader of his team, and by the end of the first big story arc, was romantically attached to the attractive blonde teammate.

The term Mary Sue was coined 40 years ago, when a writer sent a story into a Star Trek magazine about Lieutenant Mary Sue, the youngest Star Fleet officer who could do no wrong. It now refers to a character who is unnaturally good at their position, and doesn’t have to work very hard to get to that position. This is bad character design, because that’s not how the real world works for most people. We want to see characters struggle and overcome, because that’s what we understand life to be about.

Many people say Rey from Star Wars 7 as a Mary Sue, since she kinda shortcuts all the usual Jedi training and just does it instead. Feel free to think upon that yourself instead of posting in the comments about how I’m a chauvinist because I don’t like a strong female lead.

Background characters

This is another pratfall of writers. Background characters are still characters, and sometimes need just as much development as the main characters. Example time!

In the Harry Potter books/movies, Harry Potter is the main character. We know that because the stories revolve around his actions, and because his name’s in the title. (Note that having your name in the title doesn’t make you the main character. See: The Legend of Zelda.) We understand Harry’s goals easily: he wants to be a wizard. He wants to win the Triwizard Tournament. He wants to not get killed by He Who Must Not Be Named.

But Harry isn’t the only character. He’s flanked by Ron and Hermione, opposed by Draco and Snape, and mentored by Dumbledore and Hagrid. Each of these characters has their own goals. Ron is trying to be unique among a giant family full of wizards. Hermione wants to prove that her ordinary parentage won’t stop her from succeeding. Draco spends all his time thinking he’s better than everyone else, and he’s mostly right. Snape’s motivations are difficult to nail down, but they’re definitely there. Dumbledore and Hagrid both want to see Harry succeed, from different angles.

What makes all these characters work in a series ostensibly about Harry Potter is how their goals align or contrast. Ron and Hermione ally themselves with Harry because they see each other as comrades in obscurity, who all have to work extra hard to achieve their own goals. Draco quickly learns that Harry is not to be messed with, which only makes him mess with Harry more to prove his own superiority. Snape has history with Harry, and works very hard to make sure he will be there for him when the time comes. And Dumbledore and Hagrid are giant softies who want to see everyone succeed.

Give background characters goals, figure out how they work with the main character’s goals, and you will have much more compelling characters.

People who are Too Cool

Switching gears back to characters that are Not Good, beware of characters who have room to grow, but start out with too much character development. This limits how far the character can actually grow before you have to expand your world to make room for the character.

Two good examples of this are Superman and the recent Call of Duty games as wholes. Superman, in his early days, just did basic superhuman things. High jump, immune to bullets, hears really good. Nowadays, he’s practically invincible. It’s hard to find a challenge for Superman to overcome, because he’s so powerful. Yes, such threats exist, but they aren’t on the scale that normal people could possibly mirror in their life.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was a good game. The story was a bit bombastic, but it made sense. The most recent “modern” installment, Infinite Warfare, opens with one character single-handedly storming a space station, killing basically everyone before being taken out by the big bad guy. If that’s the opening scene, escalation from there is difficult.

That’s not to say that starting big can’t work. It’s all a matter of context and scale. In Saints Row 4, Earth is destroyed within the first hour of play. However, since the context of the game has galactic proportions, Earth is actually pretty small on the scale. It’s only a big deal to us because we live on Earth.

OK, that’s enough typing for today. Later, I’ll either dive deeper into one of these, or come up with some more archetypes to talk about.

It’s not often you have to pass through a metal detector to see art. Maybe I’m just used to the MIA having lax security. But the Vision of Peace is worth seeing, even if you have to concede to underpaid security officer’s requests.

Inside the Ramsey County office (where I have been for jury duty, but I wasn’t paying attention then), a massive white onyx statue stands. It’s made of over 30 pieces of stone that were carved individually, then assembled. It depicts five Native Americans smoking pipes, their smoke rising to form a larger figure. It’s not the most detailed sculpture in the world, but it is the largest onyx sculpture.

There’s more to it than just being large. It actually oscillates back and forth over the course of a day. Every 2.5 hours, it completes its rotating and does another cycle. This serves a few purposes. First, you’d never be able to see the detail work on the back otherwise. Second, this allows the statue to “see out” farther, casting its gaze over a wider area.

The statue was unveiled on May 28, 1936, so yesterday was the 82nd anniversary. But that’s not the only cool artistic thing to see in the county office.

The building itself is interesting. Designed during the Art Deco period, a lot of the functional parts of the building are more art than function or decoration. The elevator doors are almost sculptures, the lights are angular instead of round, the ceiling in the lobby is reflective (making the statue look even better).

In the basement, there’s a bit of history, including the history of the sculpture and the building. There’s also a piece of the 35W bridge that collapsed, which is important to remember, but a little weird to have on display.

Parking is available at curb-side, and it doesn’t take more than 20 minutes to see the sights.

Told you we’d be back here. It’s time to take another look at how Magic: the Gathering uses the entire trading card to tell a story. This time, we’ll be looking at two (or more) cards that together tell a single part of a story.

For my introduction to the game of Magic and the parts of a card, you can check out Storytelling with Cardstock 1.

I was reminded of this topic from a Magic podcast that ended up on the topic of the card Grapple with the Past. I’m not linking that card yet, because to truly understand the story, you have to start with Make a Wish. The story of this single card is that wishes are frowned upon, but still happen. The card itself allows you to gain back cards that were once discarded, so the function matches the flavor.

If you read Part 1, you know that I looked exclusively at the world of Innistrad. Make a Wish is from that world, at a time when, creatively, the Magic team didn’t know there would be a return. But return they did, and that’s when some genius decided to make Grapple with the Past. For full effect, I’ll put the two images next to each other.

The same artist drew both cards. Years apart, a story once thought over is continued. And that wouldn’t be the last example of past-and-present storytelling in Innistrad.

First, the zombies were encroaching on the church. Now, the zombies are in, and they aren’t going to go away. (The same artist drew these two cards. Different than the last artist.)

Moving away from Innistrad, let’s take a journey over to Tarkir. Tarkir was inspired by Asian cultures: nomadic Monguls, Tibetan monks, etc. It is also a land of dragons, but not at first. The dragons have all gone, and Sarkhan, a hometown boy finally returned home, doesn’t like the lack of dragons. He goes back in time and changes the timeline so that dragons are alive in the present. There’s a lot of timeline-vs-timeline storytelling here, but the best example is Summit Prowler, the monster that’s the same in both timelines.

The dragons are back, and with them, a change in perception for the poor summit prowler. In the first timeline, they were feared. In the second, they are a tasty snack.

Here’s one more, and it’s a doozy. Magic’s favorite villain currently is Nicol Bolas, and I’ll do a full work-up of his story one day. Recently, a group of main characters ignored good advice and confronted him. The end of that story is a series of five cards named So-and-So’s Defeat.

Clearly, the five of them didn’t do very well. But if you look carefully, one of them is different. Can you spot it? Scroll down for the answer.

 

 

 

The third one, Liliana, is different. Of all five, she still holds her purple energy power in her hand, and she’s not being actively defeated. In the story, her defeat is not physical or emotional, but transitional. Nicol Bolas, instead of destroying her, basically says, “Remember how I kicked your butt before? How about you owe me a favor” and lets her leave. He hasn’t called in that favor yet, but I don’t think it will go well.

There’s more storytelling in the cards, but not as much multi-card storytelling. Usually, it’s just pieces of a big story, not interconnected pieces. I think the next Storytelling in Cardstock will have to be single cards with my favorite art.