follow me:
This sinister looking gentleman here, is MinRep. The antagonist of Bad Luck Inc. and the embodiment of everything that is unpleasant and bad in corporate life.
(This isn’t to say I think corporate life is automatically unpleasant and bad, but for the purposes of the story that’s exactly what is represented here.)
MinRep is something of a mystery, a person who you can only truly judge via the subtext of what he tells you, because he’s not the sort of person to tell you about himself openly unless he’s boasting or berating. If you’ve worked in a large office before, chances are you know someone like MinRep. That smug grin. An overbearing attitude. A posture of superiority.
His description in the script is as follows:
“He sports a light tan, and has short black hair. He’s sporting a bemused and cruel smile. There’s a sharpness to his eyes that suggest this man has the potential to be a total utter bastard.”
Is he like this for the sake of it or more from being a product of his environment? Nature, nurture or a bit of both? There’s no real answer directly in the story to truly satisfy this, although he provides a reflection of sorts against Neon, who is affected by both nature and nurture, but tied in with the obvious overall theme that Bad Luck Inc. as a company is also a product of both (nature = human nature and nurture = created to satisfy the human need for corporate driven order through control over more random elements/chaos, e.g. ‘luck’). So in essence, you could say Neon is more the positive flip side to corporate life, the representation of the ‘worker’ to MinRep’s detached management role – a person who sees employees as assets rather than human beings. To him, Bad Luck Inc., corporate life and what the company stands for is everything. Worse, MinRep sees the company as a mirror image of humanity and society’s urge to have control at all costs; paradoxically an ultimately destructive desire to cease destruction… or at least destruction outside controllable methods.
So to MinRep, to betray the company is to betray yourself and everything that makes you human.
The origins behind MinRep’s name is actually one of many Easter Eggs that exist within the story. I’ve written Bad Luck Inc. to have several subtexts (some of which should be personal to the reader) and by its very nature has a number of little details that will only really become evident on at least a second reading. Like ‘Neon’, MinRep’s name is one of the little nuggets I’ve placed in the tale to hint towards something, but I’ll be saving that for a more in-depth ‘expose’ to the story in a month or so. But if you can work out the genesis of MinRep’s name, then you can work out part (not all) of Bad Luck Inc.‘s tonal influence and from that little clues that break off to reveal other story factors.
There’s certainly more to MinRep than first appears, although I leave much of that out the story. Bad Luck Inc. is a pilot of sorts, as I did consider it for a full blown series should the story be favourably received, so there are number of ‘what ifs’ laid subtly in the plot that can be followed up if I decide to go that route; MinRep being one of them.
But that’s for another time.
Next Bad Luck Inc. preview will be focusing on a very strange character called, Democritus. And yes, his name is symbolically related to the Greek philosopher – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democritus. Lots of clues there, needless to say…
< Go Back
