Bringing Light

 This week, I ‘m going to do something a bit different for my blog post.  I still have plenty of ideas to dig into the Mull-tiverse theme, and this week’s post will still be related to that, but I won’t be looking at any of the books in particular.

Last week, I watched a live stream interview with Brandon Mull where he talked about his journey to becoming an author, his process, his inspirations, and how his faith impacts these things.  It was a beautiful interview that gave me more respect for him not just as an author (which I already had) but as a human being.  I left that event thinking, if I ever have the opportunity to meet him in person, I am going to take it because I want to thank him in person for the inspiration he has given me and so many others.

There are plenty of things that I could discuss about that interview here, but I am going to focus on three comments he made (one random, one insightful, one inspiring).  The intent is not just to rehash the interview and do a play-by-play.  For one, he had some very vulnerable moments where he shared some personal experiences and, while this increased my respect for him and aspire to have the will to be that vulnerable in the right moments, I don’t feel it is my place to pick apart his life experiences.

This is a fan blog, but it is more about the content than the man himself.  That being said, any opportunity to get content from the author is golden.

Random: One of the things he asked was if he had a favorite of his characters or if there was one he felt particularly connected to.  He didn’t really answer this, but he did.  First he explained how it was his job, as an author, to hide the fact that all of his characters are part of him.  As an aspiring writer myself, I appreciated this, but when he got down to talking about one particular character, I was actually surprised: It was Nate from Candy Shop Wars.  The reason I say he didn’t really answer this is because his explanation was that Nate was closest to him personality wise at that stage of his life.  I honestly expected it to be Seth from Fablehaven and Dragonwatch since there is more content about Seth, but it was also very intriguing and made me more eager to read the Candy Shop War books again (also, he said his next one would “probably” be a CSW 3 book).

Insightful: Another one of the questions, really the main question that they focused on the most, was how his faith impacted his writing.  He basically told his life story as a response, but one thing that he said really stood out.  I wish I had written his exact wording, but here it is in a nutshell: a time came where he had a decision about what kind of stories he wanted to produce.  He said he was so full of ideas that there were plenty of directions he could take.  The decision he made was that he wanted to share stories that brought light into the world.

This, of course, got me thinking about all his books that I’ve read and the light that they have brought to my life and my son who has read some of his books too.  It also made me think of his literal use of light: the Source, the orantium blast that destroyed Maldor, and how thematic light and the battle between light and darkness is across all his writing.

To go full-on Nerd for a moment here, I LOVE fan theories.  I don’t necessarily agree with every single fan theory out there, but I love the idea of fan theories.  One of my favorites is one of the biggest out there: The Pixar Theory, which suggests that all Pixar movies exist in the same universe on one gigantic timeline (if you don’t know about it, look it up; it’s fascinating).  Any time Pixar comes out with a new movie, I try to see how it fits in to the Pixar Theory.  Then I watch the Super Carlin Brothers (probably the biggest proponents of it) to see what they have to say about it.  At one point, the Super Carlin Brothers made a comment that made me love fan theories even more.  They were addressing some comments about people who had found content that disproved the theory, and basically their response was: You don’t get it.  That’s not why fan theories exist.  It’s about the message that the theory teaches as a whole.  With the Pixar theory, that message is about two sources of energy that we all need: emotions and memories.

Back to the interview with Brandon Mull: his comment about light, with regards to this blog, made me rethink what purpose it can serve.  It’s fun to see how the worlds are connected, and point out the Easter Eggs in his writing, and I’ll continue to do that.  And because of the comment from the Super Carlin Brothers, I had always intended to get to the point where I identified the overarching theme.  Then the author, himself, handed me the answer: bringing light into the world.  I know this is super vague, and could go in a lot of different directions.  But Brandon Mull handed me the compass, so to speak, to identify the theme.

Inspiring: This one is going to take a sharp turn away from the book content pretty soon, so to avoid distracting from the comment Mull made later on, I’m going to get this out here now: there was a specific moment in Dragonwatch: Return of the Dragon Slayers that popped into my mind and became even more meaningful than it already felt when I read it for the first time.  It was the moment when Seth was immersed in the aether at the Source.  You can read my detailed analysis of this scene in last week’s post as it relates to the Mull-tiverse, if you want.  His comment made me realize that there was imagery he uses that I was missing out on.

Brandon Mull made a comment directly about his faith that struck me.  I have been thinking about it all week, and not as it relates to his writing.  He had been recounting a time in his life where he had felt “unfixable.”  He didn’t see any way that he could be repaired, so to speak.  The way he was able to move past that was his reliance on the Savior, Jesus Christ.  He said he had always thought of himself as a faithful person—had great faith in prayer, liked going to church, served a mission for his church, but it wasn’t until that experience that he truly understood Christ’s role as our Savior—that he can fix the unfixable, heal the unhealable, and bring light where there’s darkness.  I don’t remember if those were his exact words, but it’s what I left thinking about after the interview.

What’s funny is, as I started watching the interview, knowing he would be talking about his faith, and still thinking that it would be interesting to dive into his writing again based on what he said.  While that is true, and I am excited about continuing to explore his books to develop this fan theory further, when he made this comment, at least a piece of that went away.

It became, and remains, much more important to learn how to rely on Christ and become a better person.

Moving forward, I’m still going to explore Brandon Mull content and the Mull-tiverse theory because, as I said, this is a fan blog.  And I hope it is as fun for you, the readers, as it is for me.  But I’ll be diving into themes more, and since Brandon Mull is a Christian, and since I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and therefore a Christian as well, I’ll be exploring Christian themes in the writing.  It's going to be a great ride!