ECCENTRIC ORBITS

I borrow the phrase "eccentric orbits" from astrodynamics. Wikipedia saith:

The orbital eccentricity of an astronomical object is a parameter that determines the amount by which its orbit around another body deviates from a perfect circle.

In my numerous reviews of and investigations into the many domains that make up fiction-- not least those of phenomenality-- I've often found myself faced with such "deviations." Most works of art, whether they are naturalistic, uncanny, or marvelous, display a "centric will" on the part of the author. Plot and characters are strongly organized around the author's concept as to what things are possible in his world. 

Three convenient examples of differing phenomenalities were first cited in NUM-INOUS CONFRONTATIONS, VIOLENT SUBLIMITY, PART 1 and PART 2. At the time I wrote these essays, I was investigating Kant's concept of sublimity only in terms of dynamicity, and had not yet formulated the corresponding concept of the combinatory-sublime. I summed up three films with respect to their phenomenalities, as follows:

In DIRTY HARRY, as noted before, the hero dwells within an entirely naturalistic cosmos... In ENTER THE DRAGON, the hero dwells within a cosmos that largely appears naturalistic but deviates in a few vital aspects, which have a marked effect on Lee's struggle for dominance...In STAR WARS, the heroes dwell witin a cosmos that may be "natural" to them but which is clearly "marvelous" to us. 

Planets that have almost no eccentricity (like Earth) come as close as is physically possible to describing circular orbits. All of these cinematic works have a similar uniformity of "orbit," there are no elements of naturalistic, uncanny, or marvelous phenomenality that conflict with the "centric will" expressed in the main story.

And yet, I've often encountered works that manifested such conflicts. For instance, here's how I strove to sort out the phenomenality of Wilkie Collins' famous 1868 crime novel THE MOONSTONE, from this film-review:

The famous plot of THE MOONSTONE deals with a fabulous diamond, originally from the head of a Hindu idol, which is stolen from India by a reprobate British officer.  After the thief dies he leaves the diamond-- rumored to be cursed-- to his niece Rachel, a heiress being courted by her two first cousins Franklin and Godfrey.  (Nowhere in the novel does anyone remark on this level of consanguinity: one assumes that both Collins and his original English audience found it unremarkable, at least for the aristocracy.)  A trio of Indians, dedicated to returning the holy diamond to India, haunts the steps of Rachel and her protectors.  Because the unnamed Indians are so fantastically dedicated to their unique task, Collins' novel *might* be classified as uncanny because the Indians' "bizarre crime" (which is only a crime in the technical sense of the English law, of course) makes such a strong affective impact on the reader, and takes on a near-supernatural aspect at the conclusion even though technically nothing supernatural occurs.  The same logic applies to the "exotic lands and customs" trope.
The one aspect that propels the novel into the "marvelous" category appears early in MOONSTONE and never comes up again.  Because Collins wanted to give his Indians an almost supernatural ability to be wherever he wanted them to be-- and because he surely knew that they would hardly blend in well with British society-- Collins has one of his characters overhear the Indians using an unnamed English boy in a divinatory ceremony.  It establishes the possibility-- which the reader must take seriously even if no one in the novel does so-- that the boy is a real medium who can tell the Indians at all times where to locate the diamond.  It's a clever device, and I personally consider it veracious enough to classify MOONSTONE as "marvelous," even though I realize most readers won't take note of it.

In my newly re-formulated terms of "centric will" and "eccentric will," I would say that the centric will of Collins' novel falls into the phenomenal domain of the uncanny, because the actions taken by the Hindu seekers to recover their sacred diamond comprises the "center" of the narrative.  Their one "marvelous" talent, that of using a medium's psychic talents for guidance, is invoked by Collins only to make it credible that the Hindus are able to track down the diamond when they have no other means to do so. Thus, the one marvelous element in THE MOONSTONE expresses an "eccentric will," a will that deviates from the novel's central-- and uncanny-- concerns.

I  mentioned a similar concern in ASPIRIN FOR ANTHOLOGIES, which dealt with the often perplexing phenomenalities of stories set in Frank Miller's SIN CITY universe. After explaining that one story in the film SIN CITY: A DAME TO KILL FOR had an absolutely veracious ghost-- which provided the only example of the marvelous-metaphenomenal-- I explained:

My review therefore classifies SIN CITY: A DAME TO KILL FOR as a "marvelous" film. Over the years I've classified other films as marvelous for the same reason: a film, being a unitary construct, cannot be just a "little bit marvelous" any more than a birth-mother can be "a little bit pregnant"... I'm playing around with some possible re-classifications that might better represent the roles played by the uncanny and the marvelous, when it is clear that they do NOT cohere with any thematic underpinnings. But I confess it probably won't provide me with an effective aspirin for all my taxonomic headaches.

I also mentioned a couple of other films in which marvelous elements played very marginal roles, and played around with the term "marginal-metaphenomenal." However, this term wouldn't work over time, since there have been many works, like Collins' MOONSTONE, where the work's centric will is uncanny, while only one or more eccentric elements are marvelous. A better example than the one mentioned in the ASPIRIN essay is 1971's HANDS OF THE RIPPER, wherein the "ripper" character is a crazy girl who begins acting like Jack the Ripper, and the only marvelous element is that of a psychic who figures out what's going on.

A week or so after finishing the ASPIRIN essay, I finally formulated the "active share, passive share" corollary, first stated here and here. These essays established the precedent that in some cases a narrative's combinatory mode might overrule its dynamic mode. Thus, even though from the POV of dynamicity, the Marvel cowboy-hero The Ringo Kid technically dwells in a "marvelous" domain because of his one encounter with a mad scientist, the symbolic underpinnings of his universe are dominantly naturalistic. The marvelous elements in RINGO KID comprise what I originally called a "minority passive share," and I now choose to link that concept to the notion of "eccentric will."
Similary the psychic elements in THE MOONSTONE and HANDS OF THE RIPPER also amount to eccentric elements, putting them in the minority passive share category.

I played around with the notion of a bifurcated phenomenality in my review of a martial-arts dud called THE SHAOLIN BROTHERS, wherein the centric will (and majority share of interest) revolves around a naturalistic core, and the elements of the marvelous are out on the periphery. Hence my name for them at the time-- "the peripheral-marvelous"-- has been subsumed by the concept of eccentric will.

Going by the current hypothesis, I would probably rate SIN CITY: A DAME TO KILL FOR as dominantly uncanny, thanks to the fact the conspicuous roles of Marv and super-ninja Miho, while the ghost's appearance, while not without all importance, amounts to a sort of perturbation in the orbit of the work as a whole.