COSMIC ALIGNMENT PT. 7

Most support-characters, like most the subordinate villains discussed in Part 5, default to "static alignment" with whoever or whatever is the "Prime" icon of the story. In the vernacular, they continue to dance with whoever brung them. But there are examples of subordinate characters who shift their alignment into a dynamic form.

In contrast to the interlocutor-types discussed in Part 6, here I will discuss the sort of figures usually described as "viewpoint characters." In my essay OUT WITH THE BAD WILL, IN WITH THE GOOD, I distinguished two narrative approaches to viewpoint characters, who usually (though not always) merge with the viewpoints of the readers:

In place of "ego-oriented," I'll speak of the *endothelic,* meaning that the narrative is focused upon the will of the viewpoint character or of someone or something that shares that character's interests.

In place of "object-oriented," I'll speak of the *exothelic,* meaning that the narrative is focused upon the will of "the other," something outside the interests of the viewpoint character, though not necessarily opposed to them.

I'll mostly focus here on exothelic stories, but just for more context, two instructive examples would be Conan Doyle's novel THE LOST WORLD and the 1933 film KING KONG. Both are stories involving intrepid adventurers voyaging to obscure parts of the Earth in order to uncover rare phenomena. But in LOST WORLD, Challenger's merry band of explorers are the focal icons of the story, despite the copious detail author Doyle provides on the phenomena of The Lost World. Therefore, LOST WORLD is endothelic. However, in KING KONG, the phenomenon is Kong, and Kong is the star. The ensemble of explorers-- Carl Denham, Ann Darrow, and Jack Driscoll-- are all vividly sketched, but they're all support-characters in an exothelic film.

Neither Kong, Darrow nor Driscoll made an encore performance in any film from the original KONG production company-- but Carl Denham did, rearing his head for one more official appearance in THE SON OF KONG that same year. While the junior giant ape never assumed the mythic resonance of his theoretical "old man," there's no question that he is the star of this exothelic show. Denham and one or two other crewmembers are the only icons linking the two films, but because they shift their support-duties from one Prime to another, they're my examples of "dynamic alignment" as it relates to support-characters.

A parallel example appeared first in THE MOON POOL, which began in a short story with viewpoint character Walter Godwin, who has a close encounter with an eldritch alien being. Author Abraham Merritt then incorporated this tale into the context of a full novel, in which Godwin and an ensemble of other characters find their way to the hidden city where the bizarre entity, The Shining One, dwells. Despite the heroic activity of some of the explorers-- not including Godwin, who's essentially a "floating eyeball"-- the author emphasizes the exothelic presence of the Shining One. The novel ends much as the short story did, with Godwin excluded from the fantasy-world and consigned to mundane reality.

That, however, doesn't keep Godwin from going on the hunt for more supernormal phenomena, and he comes across a totally different lost world in 1920's THE METAL MONSTER. I frankly don't remember what happens to Godwin at the end of that novel, but MONSTER too is exothelic, focusing upon Norhala, a young human woman who has become the thrall of an inorganic metal-intelligence. So Godwin shifts his alignment from The Shining One to Norhala, who aren't even as interrelated as the two Kongs of Skull Island.

My tentative judgment, then, is that just as I've said that there's a "crossover-vibe" when a villain introduced in one feature makes an appearance in another-- even if that villain's alignment is not static in nature-- there's also a crossover-vibe, albeit minor, in both SON OF KONG and METAL MONSTER,

Wrapping up, I should note that even though THE LOST WORLD is definitely endothelic, I'm not sure all of Doyle's other Professor Challenger stories also qualify, not having read them in some time. It's possible that in some of those, Challenger takes a back seat to whatever phenomenon he's expounding upon. But that's a question for another day.

ADDENDUM: For all Sub characters, they can only generate a crossover vibe once when first "jumping" into another cosmos. Going back to my hoary Cobra-Hyde example, their first encounter with Daredevil, after having been foes of Thor, is a crossover-- but not their second, third, or fourth encounters with Daredevil. The same rule applies to their first appearance in a Captain America feature, and so on. This concept parallels my observation about the transition of subordinate characters into Primes starring in a given feature; only the first appearance counts as a crossover.