Was Thanos right?

In Avengers: Endgame there’s a scene, at the climax of the film, in which Thanos is facing off against the battered and bruised Avengers, on a field of battle that used to be the Avengers compound. Thanos has just beaten the snot out of a bunch of superheroes, his army of ne’er-do-wells is wrecking the place, and he has managed to slip his hand into the Infinity Gauntlet and is preparing to repeat the snap and end all life in the universe. In that moment he snarls at Tony Stark, who is laying injured on the ground, raises his hand for the snap, and says, “I am inevitable.”

It’s a bookend to earlier in the movie, when the Avengers tracked down their timeline’s Thanos and put an end to him. His final words were “I am inevitable.” And the rest of the movie was essentially proof of that.

Ultimately Thanos is defeated—bested by one of Earth’s most brilliant minds, in a moment of heroic self sacrifice. Thanos’ ego, that unrelenting self assurance that he and his cause were right and just, and that resistance was futile (borrowing from the Borg on that one), ultimately gives Tony the window he needed to pull off a one in 14,000,605 chance to save the universe.

Don't get me wrong… I love it when the heroes win, especially against impossible odds. But that line from Thanos has stuck with me. It’s even become a cornerstone of my philosophy. Because… God I hate saying this… Thanos was right.

He really was inevitable. He was one guy, with a twisted but driven philosophy, dead set on doing what he set out to do because he knew it was the right thing to do. For him. Maybe not for the rest of us. But in his view, he was saving the universe by destroying it. Kind of like cutting off a limb to save a patient, or cutting your losses and moving on when you’ve been scammed. You can either put all your energy into pushing back against the the overwhelming reality of the problem, or you can accept that reality and turn to building a new path and moving forward.

Or you can time travel and solve everything, obviously. Chronos ex machina.

So there’s a whole philosophy we could dip into there, but let me turn this around a bit. I think “I am inevitable” is maybe… just maybe… the single greatest success strategy there is.

Yesterday I did a livestream for the 100th episode of Self Publishing Insiders, the official Draft2Digital Podcast. The show is aimed at what I like to call “authors and will-be authors.”

At one point in the show we got a question about getting books into brick and mortar bookstores. There are a lot of challenges involved in this, and ultimately it’s just simply not an easy thing to do. Bookstores are used to having certain controls and terms—like the ability to return books for a full refund if they don’t sell—that indie authors usually can’t offer. So that makes it difficult to convince a bookstore to carry your books.

There are ways to work with this, but they typically take monumental effort, and usually put a level of cost and overhead on the shoulders of the author that can be untenable. Most self-published authors don’t have the budget to spend on the pursuit. So the dream of having your book front and center at a Barnes & Noble or at an indie bookshop or on the shelves of your local Kroger or Walmart… for most authors it’s a dream that just isn’t going to happen. It can… but it isn’t likely.

Once we’d answered that question, I offered up a bit of advice drawing from this particular cornerstone of my philosophy: “Personally, I want to be like Thanos… I want to be inevitable.”

“If you make yourself big enough online, if you put all that marketing money and energy into making yourself undeniable online, you will have people approach you about putting your books in their brick and mortar store.”

In other words, make yourself big enough and they’ll come to you.

The idea is simple: Stop putting your energy into trying to be everywhere, stop stressing that you aren’t making it big in all the places, and focus instead on being excellent on one platform. Come to dominate that platform. Become too big to be ignored.

Be inevitable.

Beyond marketing your work or becoming famous or being the top person in your career, being inevitable also applies to your personal character. I have a scene from my book Shaken, in which the protagonist Alex Kayne is a fugitive on the run, and the FBI are starting to close in. Kayne is innocent, but she’s also determined to stay out of prison. And doing so means bending rules and doing things that are outside of her character.

But where Kayne becomes inevitable is in her decision to come back around and assert her principles after the fact. Her principles are, in fact, summed up by the final line of this passage:

It was technically stealing.

Alexandra Kayne—call her Alex, or she probably wouldn’t answer—had the usual moral and ethical qualms about taking things that didn’t belong to her. But these days she tended to live by two core principles: survive and, maybe more important, finish the job.

She’d make up for the bad karma later.

When things settled down, and she was out of immediate danger, she’d make up for all of this. She’d send money. She’d make things right. Sometime, somehow, she’d balance the ledger.

For now, she had to do things the wrong way to get the right result.

[Pick up a copy of Shaken and let me know what you think]

Kayne, in my mind, is an inevitable character. She’s been framed, is being chased, faces impossible odds, and has essentially no hope of clearing her name. But she keeps pushing, keeps fighting, keeps running. And more than that, she keeps being herself. She doesn’t lose who she is, or the principles she believes in, just because things got really hard. She’s inevitable because she knows herself, and she refuses to lose herself to the challenge she faces.

That’s called “having character.” But what I want for my own life, and for yours, is for us to always think of it as being inevitable.

Because in that, at least, Thanos really was right. When you are true to who you are, regardless of the obstacles and challenges you face, and when you learn to rise and dominate on a platform that allows you to extend your reach and pursue your goals and dreams, being inevitable is what will make people take notice. It’s what will see you through. It’s what will make you someone who can’t be ignored.

Be inevitable.

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If you like this post, there’s a blog full of this kind of stuff. And Side Notes is basically an extension of my Note at the End, which you’ll find in all of my novels. And you can find those by clicking here. Share this post with your friends, if you found it helpful. And buy my books if you’d like to support me and my work!

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