I agree! Having a balance of items/stories is good. If everyone has an item with that degree of weight to it, then it puts a kind of heavy cast on things. It's like with linked verse: Only some verses can be about the halo around the spring moon. Others have to be about more mundane things, like breaking a sandal strap, or gnats buzzing around the horse's ears.
Sometimes we need small stakes, too, to remind us just how breathtaking the large stakes are. Part of the problem with superhero movies and the Marvel universe and all that is that it's always THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE (OR OKAY MAYBE JUST HALF OF IT) IS GOING TO DIE, and pretty soon that becomes just yeah, yeah, yeah, another typical Tuesday, amirite mates? But if your stakes are usually whether you can get the fridge fixed before the entire elementary school's milk curdles, or whether you can get a recording of the mayor accepting bribes to clear the neighborhood for a new stadium, why then if you throw in some larger-stakes thing, it's more stark. Or well, that's the theory? As I type this, I'm having doubts. I'm feeling like it may depend on the storytelling. Like in some people's hands, I think the curdled milk wins hands down over more mediocre, large-stakes stories no matter what.
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Sometimes we need small stakes, too, to remind us just how breathtaking the large stakes are. Part of the problem with superhero movies and the Marvel universe and all that is that it's always THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE (OR OKAY MAYBE JUST HALF OF IT) IS GOING TO DIE, and pretty soon that becomes just yeah, yeah, yeah, another typical Tuesday, amirite mates? But if your stakes are usually whether you can get the fridge fixed before the entire elementary school's milk curdles, or whether you can get a recording of the mayor accepting bribes to clear the neighborhood for a new stadium, why then if you throw in some larger-stakes thing, it's more stark. Or well, that's the theory? As I type this, I'm having doubts. I'm feeling like it may depend on the storytelling. Like in some people's hands, I think the curdled milk wins hands down over more mediocre, large-stakes stories no matter what.