Maru-maru, in the meantime, is not very happy with the rate of progress on the whole motivation project…and he doubts his own abilities to contribute much more to a positive outcome. Scruffy ronin just aren’t supposed to even be motivated, let alone be motivational.*
He realizes that a good McGuffin could help the cause. McGuffins are good for motivation, even more so than McMuffins (an only obliquely related concept). But there aren’t a lot of well-established McGuffins for sports shows. Athletes are expected to be kinda self-motivating, and to ask for little more than the opportunity to win some sort of championship or cup, plus the self-esteem that comes with it. But that’s obviously not enough for this team…which, to be fair, consists entirely of people who didn’t end up in this place of their own designs. A McGuffin would need to appear out of thin air, here!
And it can! If you can’t create a plausible McGuffin for your script in any halfway natural and plausible way, you can always go for the double whammy: a deus-ex-machina-McGuffin. With the deus-ex-machina in this case being a much more literal deus than is usually the case. A true classic. Showed up in medieval morality plays, showed up in Monty Phython. You can’t get more classic than that.
Of course, being the most literal and classic deus-ex-machina, Deus provides a very classic and time-honored, but perhaps slightly worn and outdated, McGuffin: the Holy Grail.
Maru-maru likes the idea. Although he might be a bit overly optimistic here…yes, there are many stories of the quest for the grail motivating people to almost superhuman achievements. But a., these stories are just legends and b., the team Maru-maru is trying to motivate doesn’t really seem to be that big on religion. But, who knows, perhaps it’ll work if it comes directly from the deus-ex-machina?
More on Monday.
*Especially since he hasn’t drunken any sake in a while.