What is a meta for?

Two interesting points in your last post about Prison Planet (which, I hereby propose is our working title. If voted down, I am happy to consider others, but I'm kind of excited about the fact that if we keep writing about this, anybody searching for the term "prison planet" on Google is gonna get inundated with Spitball! posts about it. Currently, they are drawn to political statement websites).

1. Ultimate point of finding a character.
Yes. Of course, and good point. That is our goal, I'd say. Not, as has been our habit in the past, to entwine ourselves in overly complex plot points and lose site of the character within. I would go so far as to say that one of the metrics we should judge Prison Planet by is the emotional resonance of the characters, whatever their state happens to be.

2. Metaphor
Well, yes--the Prison Planet is kind of obvious as one, but I think we should be careful about how we play with metaphor. I would propose that we define a few rules about the world, and then start a search for our protagonist. We find them and their story, and not worry about potential metaphors until we have the script better plotted out. Then we can tighten things to reinforce subtext if needed, but I'll bet it worms it's own way into our story through our interests.

To that end, I propose that we both spend some time ruminating on what is exciting or cool to us about the idea of a Prison Planet? We can mesh our ideas and come up with a landscape that might suggest a character. Are you game?