Domino is one of those things that’s really quite beautiful when you watch it in action. When you start with a single domino and tip it over ever-so-slightly, it triggers a chain reaction that cascades down like an elegant waterfall. It’s almost hypnotic to watch, which is why it’s a great metaphor for writing. We all want our novels to have that same kind of momentum – something that grabs readers and sweeps them along for the ride.
As a book editor, I love to use this analogy when teaching my clients how to plot their stories. I tell them to think of their characters and plot beats as individual dominoes that can be tipped over by any number of other actions. Those other actions will cause other dominoes to fall, which will trigger even more reactions — and so on and so on. This is called the domino effect, and it’s an important element of any story.
In the past, domino sets were made from a variety of materials, including bone, silver lip ocean pearl oyster shell (mother-of-pearl), ivory, and dark hardwoods such as ebony, with contrasting black or white pips inlaid or painted on them. More recently, dominoes have been manufactured from polymer materials such as plastic and epoxy resin. These sets tend to be more durable and have a brighter, more colorful look than their natural-material counterparts.
Aside from being a great game for kids, Domino can be used to create artistic designs. For example, a person can create lines of dominoes that form pictures when they’re laid out, curved lines that curve or twist as they fall, grids with shapes formed from the way the dominoes are stacked, and even 3D structures such as towers and pyramids. Some domino artists are also known to create large-scale domino displays for movies, television shows, and events such as music launches. The YouTube artist Hevesh, for example, has created domino setups involving up to 300,000 dominoes that take several nail-biting minutes to fall.
During her time with X-Force, Domino came into conflict with Donald Pierce and Lady Deathstrike, who had captured Milo Thurman and attempted to download his mind into a computer. Dom foiled the process, but her luck powers and reflexes were not enough to save him.
After a brief stint as the Punisher, Domino rejoined X-Force under the leadership of Cable, and later became a member of the mercenary group the Six Pack. She was briefly recruited into X-Corporation, an organization intended to monitor mutant rights violations, but was quickly dismissed after her ally Risque was killed and she failed to prevent a human from harvesting living body parts for his U-Men.