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firstpuffin · 3 years
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Avatar: the Last Airbender; the shifting dichotomy in episode 3
The interesting part of looking far too much into fiction is that the more you do it the more that writing begins to look like more than just a temporary distraction and more and more like the art that it is. While rewatching Avatar the Last Airbender I picked up on a story-telling trick that probably goes over people’s heads much like it did mine the first few times and I love what it does.
Episode three begins to expand on the main protagonist Aang and the antagonist Zuko, revealing their pasts and who they are as individuals. As the episode progresses there is an interesting shift in not only how they are portrayed but what we see deeper inside them. 
   Zuko, the bad guy, is full of anger and defensive arrogance while being supported by his kindly and wise uncle; Aang, our hero, is excited and happy to be returning home while his new friends Katara and Sokka are hesitant and cautious. Already they are shown as opposites.
   Immediately the episode thrusts Aang’s enthusiasm at us, untempered by his friends as they complain or attempt to prepare him for the worst. He forges onward to his old home, the now abandoned Southern Air Temple.
   The episode shifts to Zuko and the colour pallet is full of reds and blacks; our villain is angry and is approached by a man who is ostensibly an ally but Zuko puts up walls immediately and attempts to turn away but is prevented from leaving. He is forced to be the man’s guest while being questioned about Aang whose existence he denies. 
Aang and co. discover a clue to his destiny and he gets distracted by a lemur which he chases throughout the temple.
   Zuko’s secret is revealed and out of anger he challenges his supposed ally to ritual combat. This fight doesn’t go well for him until his uncle’s advice and his own trauma kick in and he turns things around by pushing a fortuitous opportunity.
   Aang chases the lemur all the way to where his old mentor and father-figure lays, long dead and surrounded by dispatched soldiers. This shock sends him into a mindless rage and while Katara is able to bring him out of it, it is a sad moment that raises concerns for his future.
   Zuko wins the match and shares an unexpectedly tender moment with his uncle.
So what is it that I’m trying to bring attention to here?
   Well the episode contains two stories following the two characters, and their climaxes occur at the same time and each with a very different feel compared to what came before it. Zuko’s story begins grim and unhappy while Aang’s is cheerful and bright; hopeless verses hopeful.
   But after his climax Zuko is- not cheerful but hopeful, feeling stronger and comforted by the presence of his uncle.
   After his climax, Aang is feeling hopeless as his own power and uncertain future scares him and the presence of his friends only seems to help so much.
This switch in the character’s emotional states and feelings towards the future is telling and powerful, giving Zuko the positive momentum that the villain only usually gets towards the end of the series to make things seem worse for the hero. Maybe this is meant to suggest than he is not the villain he is being portrayed as.
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firstpuffin · 4 years
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The really weirdly bizarre escalation in the Katekyo Hitman Reborn manga:
Those of you who have watched the anime will have at least an idea of where I’m going with this one, but Katekyo Hitman Reborn (Reborn for short) struggles with the problem of story escalation.
  Basically, without a sense of escalation a long running story will fall short. You know how Superhero comics, films and television often gets kind of bizarre? Iron Man goes from fighting terrorists to saving half the universe. Smallville Clark Kent starts off punching mooks with superpowers to fighting immortal Kryptonian monsters.
 Reborn begins as what is known as a gag manga: an episodic series where humour is more important than story or depth. But following the likes of Dragon Ball, Reborn eventually moves into the realm of action and plot.
  “But what is the premise” I didn’t hear you ask. Our hero Japanese 14-year old Sawada Tsunayoshi (or Tsuna) turns out to be related to the founder of a mafia group and naturally that means he needs to become the next leader. Reborn, the titular Katekyo Hitman (hitman home tutor… it’s manga, deal with it) is sent to groom him into the perfect mafia boss, and is completely unperturbed by the fact that Tsuna is both an idiot and a wimp.
 So once the story actually begins, Tsuna is sent to capture some mafia criminals (criminals even by the mafia’s standards) and while the villain, Rokudo Mukuro, has some grand plans, him actually succeeding at them is a whole other thing.
  Then for the next story, he has to fight a branch of his mafia who have equal claim to the position, but they are jerks and so he resists (also, he and his friends would be murdered if he didn’t win).
  Both of these are pretty low stakes, only really affecting the criminal world, but definitely escalating. So presumably the third story arc is something like an intra-mafia battle, right?
 Tsuna has to save all of reality.
 What, the fuck?
I’m not kidding in the slightest. The antagonist, Byakuran, has the power to cross parallel realities and has ruined all infinite of them (shut up! just think Crisis of Infinite Earths from DC) in an attempt at designing his own world. Tsuna and his friends have been dragged 10 years into the only remaining timeline in order to stop Byakuran. Should he fail, all reality is gone.
 So what’s the next storyline? Tsuna has a squabble with some more mafia.
 What, the fuck?
 The next story isn’t much better but there’s no point in going into it. The damage has been done.
  The escalation of Reborn shoots way beyond reason, before plummeting down to something more acceptable.
 But even weirder, it manages to work. The arc with Byakuran destroying the cosmos doesn’t have a whole lot of emotional depth, but unbelievably high stakes, whereas later stories have intense emotion. The mafia in the next story has a long but forgotten history and the members of which almost perfectly match-up or reflect Tsuna’s own friend group.
  It’s intense, it’s emotional, and I’ve passed my word limit so tah-rah for now.
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firstpuffin · 3 years
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Visual storytelling in Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days
This isn’t going to be much of an article; it’s not going to ask any questions nor answer them, but I wanted to bring up an interesting example of visual storytelling in the Kingdom Hearts series. Plus I need to build up a backlog of writing because I’ve had almost zero sources of inspiration of late.
 So simply put, this example occurs in Kingdom Hearts 358/2 days and is when two of the main characters, Axel and Xion, become friends. That sounds a little cheesy, but this is the Kingdom Hearts series after all.
  Axel has been gone for a while, taking part in the events of the game Chain of Memories before coming back to find that his pal Roxas has been hanging out with the new girl, Xion. Any hesitancy he has towards Xion disappears fast and we see the same for her.
  Only in Xion’s case we actually see the moment she accepts him.
 There are a lot of unclear magic systems in the Kingdom Hearts franchise, and Xion is the result of Organisation XIII, who these three characters are a part of, faffing about with the memories of Sora, the series’ lead character. Long story short, Xion is an artificial being made using Sora’s memories in order to replicate his power, but as such she’s not a real person, even by Organisation XIII’s standards.
  So when these three hang out for the first time I noticed that Xion had left her hood up, hiding her face, even though in the previous scene she had it down. I assumed this was because out of some demure shyness towards this person she wasn’t sure of, but when Roxas talks to her, the hood is off.
  Axel speaks to her, and the hood is back on.
  Roxas speaks, hood off.
  Axel speaks, hood on.
 Every time one of these two speak to her, the camera changes and it becomes clear that when they speak the entire scene shifts to their perception of Xion, and because she isn’t sure of Axel the hood remains up. Neither Axel nor Roxas are aware of this and there’s a fair chance that Xion isn’t either.
  But when Axel drops the line “Well, if you’re Roxas’s friend, then you’re also mine” (paraphrased from memory, sorry), the hood vanishes between scenes.
 No attention is ever brought to this, it’s never mentioned again and depending on how much attention you are paying to the small Nintendo DS screen, you may not notice it either. It’s a needless but immensely meaningful detail that the makers added, showing both their relationship and that something is odd about Xion.
 This is just one reason why despite being a drag to play, especially on the DS, 358/2 days has always been by favourite game of the series, and Xion my favourite character (although I’ve also noticed a pattern of my favourite characters being young girls with tragic circumstances which is- worrying).
  The emotional depth and heartbreak in this side-game about connected memories, Nobodies without hearts and whacking things with big keys- well it wouldn’t be half of what it is without the visual storytelling that just can’t be done in ordinary prose.
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firstpuffin · 3 years
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Rey and Din Djarin: Onscreen training double standards?
I wish I could find the post that influenced this article so that you know I’m not straw-manning their argument, but I only thought about it afterwards and cannot for the life of me find it again.
  But I do remember the gist of it so excluding what they said about Baby Yoda (which I agree with) here’s the basic idea.
  ((All of these fans complaining about how Rey had no onscreen training don’t seem to have a problem with Din using a spear he’s never been seen training with))
 But unfortunately for the poster these two characters aren’t comparable at all. I mean, just think about it: Din was trained by a warrior culture from such a young age that you may as well say his whole life, whereas Rey is experienced sure, but in using a staff against other untrained thugs. The two can’t really be compared.
  The reason why people complain about Rey is because of this: as far as we know she has never touched a weapon besides her staff and has never had formal training and maybe not even all that many fights to gain experience. We don’t even see Rey doing all that well while protecting BB-8, but it isn’t long before she’s facing down Jedi Masters and warriors, possibly Force wielding ones, who have specialist training in their respective weapons.
  Rey doesn’t have apparently any training before she is fighting at a higher level than we see Din fighting.
 Din Djarin on the other hand has presumably had intense training in any weapon the Mandolorians would have deemed important, and given his new spear is pure Beskar, something stated by Greef to be nearly impossible to find a smith who can forge, it can be assumed that it is an original Mandalorian weapon.
  However, we don’t need to make that assumption because we see more than enough to justify his skills. We see how skilled he is, his reputation and how frequently he has to test his abilities thanks to his action-heavy lifestyle.
   On top of that, while Rey is matching up to highly skilled and specialist Force using opponents, Din’s final match is verses a man without the Force, with at most a small amount of training in the Darksaber, and while wearing Darksaber proof armour.
  That pure Beskar armour might be enough to put him at an advantage against even a trained Jedi and here he is fighting someone who is basically just swinging wildly.
 I understand the complaint being made and if it helps, my biggest problem with Rey is the fact that I like her but she wasn’t done justice in the writing. Din’s fights are far better suited to what we see from him, but if he wasn’t trained his whole life and suddenly went up against Sith lords then yeah, I’d have the same problems.
 But yeah, Grogu is showing far too many untaught abilities; y’know, just like Rey?
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firstpuffin · 4 years
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Misunderstanding the message
Modern television could learn a lot from the Discworld series, and apparently so could the upcoming Discworld series from BBC America. How so? Well it will probably be in the title that I haven’t written yet, but they could learn about how to effectively introduce social topics with subtlety.
 I’m currently re-listening to Feet of Clay, the third book following the City Watch and more specifically, Samuel Vimes (of ever increasing rank) and I’m reminded of how I always intended to write something on how Discworld and Sir Pratchett deal with social issues. In the previous book he explores racial issues, with Trolls and Dwarves (who are hated enemies) and even the undead; Detritus the troll is teamed up with Cuddy the dwarf during an investigation and they develop a mutual respect; Angua is a werewolf who is obviously hiding it and has to deal with her crush who, despite otherwise being 100% accepting of everything, has an unexpected dislike of undead.
  The best part of all this is how it’s never the main point. Somebody is running around with a dangerous weapon and the Watch are trying to find him before Vimes leaves the Watch to get married (or really just before the weapon kills again). Exploration of relationships and tensions between the races is simply a natural occurrence when they are put together and very little emphasis is put on it. This is in stark contrast to, say, Dr Who where they sit behind a dumpster and chat about it.
 In Feet of Clay we have some more racism: Angua the undead turns out to be prejudiced against the lifeless Golems. We also get a new character in the dwarf Cheery Littlebottom and yes, go ahead and laugh, she expects you to. Cheery is- not transgender, no matter what BBC America tries to tell you.
  She’s a dwarf and she’s a female, and that’s it.
  And that’s the problem.
  Now I love this little bit of dwarfish sociology, but while there is obviously the two sexes, there is only one gender: male (or dwarf? it’s kind of irrelevant at that point). On a side note, this is why it’s so useful to have a distinction between sex and gender; Sir Pratchett could never have so easily explored this side of Dwarf society if the concepts were one and the same.
  Dwarves are all short, muscular, bearded and gruff; they fight, they quaff and they sing about gold, and they all go by “he”. Dwarvish courting is a confusing mess where they have to cautiously figure out if their partner has the desired genitals.
    Cheery Littlebottom is not transgender, she is just openly female. Well, she’s trying to be. The trouble is that the Dwarves are conservative as all hell so she’s struggling to express herself. Obviously this feels a lot like an exploration of gender dysphoria, but she’s not actually transgender and by our definitions she’s CIS gendered. When in Making Steam, the Low King of the dwarves, or Low Queen as it is revealed, makes steps to allow female dwarves to be openly female, any social commentary kind of dies out as Cheery is no longer fighting accepted social rules.
  The fact that BBC America has apparently tried to make her this beardless drag queen (and I mean that in an descriptive sense rather than derogatory) just shows a complete dumbing down of the message.
 I’m really bemused by what BBC America are trying to do here and I’m eager to watch the series when it comes out in January; in part because it may just be a break-out success, but more likely because I do enjoy watching a good train wreck.
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firstpuffin · 3 years
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BBC America’s The Watch characters: what’s been “reimagined” pt 2
Lord Vetinari, the Patrician, “architect of the city’s normalized wrongness and ramshackle system of governance.”
Alright. I’ve had a little cry, and gone out to grab a beer. I’m ready now.
  The hardest part of about this is how it’s not technically wrong. The city’s normalised wrongness? Well, yeah, he legalised crime after-all; once he dies then the system of governance will be ramshackle as no-one else will be able to maintain it.
  I really hope this is just badly written, as the Patrician has taken all the unavoidable aspects of a city and made it work to become a positive. Unfortunately, it does look like BBC America has made Lord Vetinari less of a genius self-proclaimed tyrant and instead into either an incompetent leader, or a mob-boss.
 The- Archchancellor…? “a wizard, magical advisor, and the Head of the Unseen University.”
  So, is this Ridcully? Or just a nameless wizard? Because that does matter.
  Well, I’ve not seen a picture of James Fleet in character so we’ll see.
 Cut-me-own-Throat Dibbler, “the city’s best snitch, with a gang of freelance henchmen at her beck and call.”
  Um, why? I mean seriously, why? Sure, this works as nobody bar the beggars or Gaspode knows the going ons of the city like Dibbler, but snitch? Gang of henchmen?
  Dibbler is a hot sausage salesman with a knack for selling even his sausages (100% pig. not pork, but pig) and whose schemes for bigger business goes wrong because- well mainly because he accidentally always gets involved with the main story. But he’s harmless as long as you don’t buy his dodgy sausages.
  Surely that’s just as useful as a gang boss? And we know it is because it is in the source material.
  Can’t really comment on Ruth Madeley in the part, simply because the part sounds so generic that my beer bottle could do the job.
 Captain John Keel, “former leader of The Watch and mentor to Sam Vimes, determined to save the corrupt and chaotic city.”
  Once again, not quite accurate. Keel never rose above Sergeant-at-arms before he died, and transferred from Pseudopolis shortly before that without any apparent aspirations towards anything more than doing his job.
  I was tempted to say that Vimes pretends to be Keel in Night Watch which might be difficult with Hakeem Kae-Kazim in the role, but given I doubt they’re going down the time-travel route from that book I also doubt they’ll be bothering with that either. I wonder if they’ll give him an eyepatch…
  We don’t actually see the man, except as a corpse, so there’s not much to say about who he is as a person except for Vimes’s memories, so there’s not much else to say here.
 Wonse, “a wizard hopeful in waiting that is frequently underestimated.”
  A wizard only in the loosest sense in that he summons a dragon, but he’s actually the patrician’s immediate aide. The antagonist in Guards! Guards!, Wonse is aiming to put a puppet-king on the throne that he can control. Potentially there is some emotional conflict between Wonse and Vimes, given they grew up together with very different levels of success. I wonder if he’ll die in the same, grimly humorous way…
  Not much to say about Bianca Simone Mannie in the role, or even the role itself at this point. I dunno how charismatic she is, but Wonse in the books needed at least some, although that may not be needed here.
 Carcer Dun, “the wounded and wronged Carcer Dun, out to hijack destiny itself, take control of the city and exact a terrible revenge on an unjust reality.”
  Fuck. Where to begin. Carcer is- Carcer- well he’s fucking terrifying and not at all wronged; that’s why he’s terrifying. Carcer isn’t a relatable character, he doesn’t have valid justification, he’s just a monster who always has one more knife and will cheerfully protest his innocence while the blood on the blade drips onto the still warm body. Carcer gives me shivers exactly because he is so wrong.
  I have nothing to say about Sam Adewunmi except that I hope he has an innocent smile, because that makes Carcer worse.
  I’m going to pass on Ingrid Oliver as Doctor Cruces. I liked her in Doctor Who, but the description given here provides nothing towards the character.
 So there is a lot to say here, hence the reluctant 2-parter and my late dinner, but I can’t help but notice some rather worrying absences from this list. Where’s Sergeant Colon and Corporal Nobbs? Detritus the troll (who appears in pictures) and Constable Cuddy? Gaspode the talking dog or Foul old Ron, always being dragged about on a lead?
  How about Wilikins the violent butler, or the Librarian?!
 In all fairness there are many characters we needed to hear about before bloody Wonse or Doctor Cruces.
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firstpuffin · 3 years
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BBC America’s The Watch characters: what’s been “reimagined” pt 1
Given my unhealthy obsession with the Discworld series and that the books following the City Watch are among my favourite, the upcoming reimagining has been on my mind a lot of late. I can’t wait for January to come along, but until then I have little to do but speculate.
  I want to take a look here at the characters of the series, specifically the profiles so conveniently provided by the Den of Geek website and compare them to what we see in the books. This isn’t with a negative bias, insofar as I can unbias myself, but merely a brief comparison.
 Let’s do this in the order of main characters:
Samuel Vimes, “Captain of The Watch, disempowered by a broken society that’s reduced his department’s jurisdiction to almost nothing.”
  A very bare description but not wholly inaccurate. In the first book- Guards! Guards!- Vimes is disillusioned with his place in the city of Ankh-Morpork, drunken, sloven, all largely thanks to his Night Watch being a joke to the community at large.
  But this description isn’t quite right: Ankh-Morpork isn’t a broken society as instead it works. Under the Patrician’s guidance the Night Watch are largely unneeded, at least ostensibly; you don’t need to catch illegal thieves when the legal Thieves Guild will do a much better job of it for you. Vimes is a broken man, but only because he hasn’t found his place yet.
  Richard Dormer at least looks the part. I’ve seen official artwork that shows Vimes as neat and proper looking, but in the books he’s always described as “scruffy”. I don’t watch trailers so I haven’t seen him in action yet, but the worst thing I can say is that the decision to not give the Watch armour was a huge loss.
 Lady Sybil Ramkin, “last scion of Ankh-Morpork’s nobility, who’s trying to fix the city’s wrongs with her chaotic vigilantism.”
  “This is where the fun begins”. But really, where to begin? Why “chaotic vigilante”? Is middle-aged dragon breeder not bad-ass enough? In the later books we don’t see too much of Lady Sybil, but she does start appearing more, and the dramatisation can easily do this much sooner without issue.
  What we really wanted from Lady Sybil was a big middle-aged woman, which would be nice representation for that demographic.
  There’s not much to say about Lara Rossi in the role except that she doesn’t really look cut out for dragon-breeding.
 Carrot (Headbanger) Ironfoundersson, “the idealistic new recruit, raised by dwarfs, but really a human abandoned at birth.”
  Not a whole lot to say here. Carrot wasn’t abandoned so much as his family massacred by bandits, but whatever.
  Adam Hugill looks big, orange and handsome, and is dressed neat enough to pass muster. I’m looking forward to watching him.
 Angua (Delphine) von Überwald, “tasked with Carrot’s training and keeping the rookie alive.”
  Well, this is… well it’s the reverse really. The second book, Men at Arms, has the Watch forced to take in minority officers, and being a werewolf Angua is a shoo-in. She is trained by Carrot and serves to show the reader how the people of Ankh-Morpork view Carrot’s bizarre charisma.
  Marama Corlette is an interesting choice. Angua is meant to be tall and beautiful, with long blonde hair (treated with products meant for dogs), but whose werewolf side manages to come through in a disconcerting manner.
  Marama is portraying her as a short, scruffy character with very short hair. She’s going to lack the disharmony that makes Angua’s beauty so much more than fanservice. Still, probably not her choice and it will be interesting to see how she deals with the werewolf inside.
 Cheery Littlebottom, “the ingenious non-binary forensics expert, ostracized by their kin and finding a new home and identity.”
  Probably giving Cheery a little bit too much credit here: she’s skilled, yes, but she has to learn forensics when she first appears in the third book, Feet of Clay. She’s not non-binary, quite the opposite, but I’ve already discussed that here, and neither is she ostracized as such. Given that she’s not a unique non-binary individual but just a part of the larger Dwarfish sociological problem, I feel that they’re missing a major opportunity in cultural sexual expectations here.
  Going by pictures alone, I’m not even sure Jo Eaton-Kent is even playing a dwarf, but wouldn’t it be better to have an actual dwarf actor play the role? And I guess if they aren’t going to bother with armour then why bother with beards, but once again it drops a whole bunch of the nuance of the source material.
 Lord Vetinari, the Patrician, “architect of the city’s normalized wrongness and ramshackle system of governance.”
  Oh.
  I intended to say that Anna Chancellor had some big, big size twelve shoes to fill after Vetinari was portrayed by Charles Dance, but apparently that’s a non-issue as the Patrician is now fucking incompetent!
  I need to calm down. I genuinely need to take a break after reading that. Bye.
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firstpuffin · 3 years
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Combining videogame mechanics with prose: The Island by Max Brooks
Given I didn’t actually know what prose meant until like a year into my writing course I reckon it won’t hurt to define it early and simply. If it’s not poetry, it’s prose. Fiction is prose, this article is prose, probably the way you think is prose, assuming you aren’t one of those people who think in images. I don’t really get that, but I do think in prose so that’s probably why. Damn, 70 words in and I’m already off topic.
 In my recent quest for novelty I decided to check out Max Brooks’ (I believe he wrote World War Z) Minecraft novelisation, Brooks neither being an author I know nor Minecraft being something I thought would make a good book. And I chose to get the audiobook from Audible, in slight because it gives me more time to focus on it when I’m out and about, but mostly because it’s read by Jack Black and I was super curious to see how he did.
  Black’s not a bad reader, but unless more characters turn up it will be hard to fully gauge- fuck, I’m off topic again.
 Sure, I also love how they use in-game music and sound effects during the reading, but this isn’t a review so check it out yourself.
  Anyway, what I wanted to talk about was how Brooks adapts the gameplay heavy video game into a novel. I’m only two chapters in so any comment on the story has to wait, but I think we share the same assumption on how the world works: it’s an adventure story set in a realistic Minecraft biome and with real-world physics.
  Ha! Nope!
 Right at the start Brooks’ unnamed character, let’s go with the canonical Steve for now, comments on the square sun and how strange it is. Then there’s the island made up of squares, and his own body. Yeah, our hero is shocked to find he has square (he keeps saying square instead of cube and my suppressed pedantry keeps trying to peek out) hands, sans fingers.
  His shock continues as he tries to grab some grass but punches out a block of dirt which shrinks and can fit into a belt pouch he has. He punches a tree, he punches leaves out of arms reach, Steve can’t eat anything that isn’t edible because his body refuses.
  He tries to pet a sheep but that’s not a mechanic so he accidentally punches it and it runs away. Steve is literally a real person thrust into the Minecraft game and restricted to its rules, and bear in mind that all of this is from a first-person point of view as well, so we get all of his internal monologue and raw emotions.
 This is a really interesting creative choice, largely because it’s so difficult to pull off and the book does have to start off slow, which suits me fine, but it may also be a requirement to writing for Minecraft. The game is based entirely around these blocks, these mechanics and this world.
  If you watch the Game Theory YouTube channel then you probably already know (of this book) about the hidden lore and background; whether or not MatPat is correct in his conclusions, there are suggestions and lore prompts all throughout the game, but that may not really be accessible to  the average player.
 Many, many people just build, and mine, and many of these people won’t have seen the Game Theory episodes, so there’s not a whole lot to write about except how the world works, and the atmosphere. I believe these might be what Brooks intends to focus on. As an author known for writing the above mentioned zombie novel, it might not be a surprise that the first hostile mob that Steve encounters is the zombie.
  Crafting in the day while learning the mechanics of his new world, and surviving the mobs at night. Any good book needs a climax and I’m not honestly sure what that’s going to be, nor how I would do the same; sure there’s the Nether and The End but those might not fit the isolated island survival story that seems to be the story.
 I’ve decided that Max Brooks hasn’t chosen to write a story based in the Minecraft world, but instead a story of the Minecraft world. Of course, I am only two chapters in, so don’t quote me on that.
  Yet.
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firstpuffin · 3 years
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What’s the future hold for Baby Yoda? (spoilers for up to episode 3 of series 2)
You’ll have to forgive me for this rushed upload. For whatever reason I’ve had a lot of trouble finding inspiration recently. Thankfully The Mandalorian series two is coming out and so I finally have something to write about.
 I’ve done one piece on The Mandalorian at the end of series one, and in it I briefly mentioned what these experiences could be doing to the memey Baby Yoda (really wish they’d give this thing a name already). As a child in its early developmental stages, Baby Yoda is inevitably going to be hugely influenced by what happens around it, and while even a normal child will likely not understand all of the pain and death going on around it, it’s silly to presume the child won’t still be affected.
  A child with empathic deficiencies for reasons such as psychopathy can still develop these skills if helped early and it’s likely that the reverse is true as well. A normal child surrounded by death and pain will struggle to understand why these are considered bad; they will have been desensitised from such a young age that it will be nearly irrevocable (and I only say “nearly” because I suppose some vicious head-trauma could do the job).
 But Baby Yoda isn’t normal; it’s much worse than that.
  Baby Yoda is Force-sensitive. It can feel both emotions and quite possibly life itself, as we see early in series one when it is distressed at Mando is killing Jawas. But our baby is now far beyond that, barely uncomfortable when killing is being done; although I think the damage isn’t quite complete yet.
  Still clearly desensitised to killing, there other signs that Baby Yoda is gonna be kinda fucked up by the end of this. It has a strange... preference for eating living creatures.
 This is hinted at in a light-hearted moment in series one when we see it swallow a frog whole. (deadpan) Oh look at that, the cute baby creature is doing something that many would consider horrific. How hilarious (deadpan ends). But it happens again in series two. Repeatedly.
  Baby Yoda’s food preference is clearly “still alive”. Almost obsessively so.
  When told off for trying to eat a lizard lady’s eggs, Baby Yoda wanders off and straight into a nest of fucking spider eggs, tears one open and just gulps it on down. It’s later attacked at two separate times by little octopus things, but as soon as Mando takes it out of action we see it getting swallowed whole.
 So what would this mean for Baby Yoda? Well probably that he’s going to get a spin off when he’s a few decades older, but that was a given anyway. How about in-world though?
  Well, a desensitisation to killing is useful for a Jedi as well, just look at those guys go. But taking pleasure from it is a Dark Side thing, and we could be watching a new Sith lord be adorably raised by a child soldier with no face.
 This isn’t a given though as Mando has been directed towards Asoka Tano, padawan to Anakin Skywalker and confusing element to the canon (at least to me who can’t remember what is and isn’t Legends anymore). Asoka left the Jedi Order for good reasons and is a good person at her core, even if she is also a child soldier.
  If Mando is able to leave Baby Yoda with her, which admittedly isn’t likely given his popularity, then he is still in his developmental stage for possibly up to a decade. With the proper training and discouragement from getting the munchies for anything smaller than him, he might still be... well, not redeemed, that would suggest the Jedi had it right, but he might yet be salvaged.
 Now yes, lots of animals and even human cultures are fine with eating live animals (and I say fuck you, those animals are gonna be dissolved alive inside your stomach acid, if not chewed up alive), and even in the same episode we see those octopi being consumed in a diner; frankly it’s a weak topic to write about, but you know what?
  I did say I had no ideas.
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firstpuffin · 4 years
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Dodger: “historical” characters:
As I mentioned in a previous piece, I’ve been reading Terry Pratchett’s Dodger and in it are a few historical people, something in fiction that I dislike almost as much as the author being the protagonist. This is probably because you are writing someone you don’t know, or you’re taking some serious liberties with who they were.
  But I’m not here to complain, but actually to praise one of these characters. He may technically be a fictional historical character, like King Arthur who is absolutely fictional but possibly based on a real person. The character in question is The Demon Barber of Fleet Street: Sweeney Todd.
 Our hero Dodger pops in to get a shave and haircut in order to impress a girl, only for ol’ Sweeney Todd to have a breakdown. He’s standing there, razor in hand, shaking and babbling, and Dodger is able to very carefully take the blade and sit him down, at which point the two cops watching from outside arrest him.
  In this world Sweeney Todd was a barber surgeon in the Napoleonic wars and very often wasn’t able to save the soldiers that ended up on his table, which broke him. According to his babbling I believe he cut the throats of those soldiers he couldn’t do anything for, with no medicine or bandages to work with.
  He started to believe that these soldiers hadn’t passed on and had followed him back home, and shaking and crying, he killed his customers thinking that he was helping these ghosts. As London declares him a monster and Dodger as the hero who battled him, we see an example of what Charles Dickens himself has been trying to teach Dodger: that the truth is malleable. The world is how we see it, and we see it how people tell us it is. Dodger proceeds to use this to his advantage throughout the story.
 Now I consider this usage of Sweeney Todd in modern writing to potentially be as much of an issue as using Dickens, Henry Mayhew or Angela Burdett-Coutts, all real historical figures. This point of view is awkward for me as I have long wanted to write something of the aforementioned King Arthur which is surely hypocritical, but I’m thinking that maybe the same reason why I do accept Sweeney might open me up to the idea of others, and that is the very purpose that his presence serves in Dodger (the book and the character).
  By even mentioning the name Sweeney Todd it brings up an image in our minds. Sweeney Todd is- well he’s the Demon Barber. Murderous and scary. That’s the story, the image, the simulacrum. He may never have existed but we know him, and we know him better than the vast majority of us will ever be known.
And then comes along Dodger, playing on this knowledge to hammer home that this is a “truth” that someone else has shaped to make a better story. That’s not a plot point, it’s a real lesson.
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firstpuffin · 5 years
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Smitten with the concept, not with the execution.
I want to start things off with a question: have you ever been invested in something, a television show, movie, video game or other, and not known why? Something like “this is boring, why do I continue with it?” I absolutely do and want to explore this with you.
  See, I have a whole shed-load of things that I “enjoy” despite the execution not being to my taste. The horror video game series “Five Nights at Freddie’s” is not at all my normal cup of tea, the final chapters of the pseudo-horror game “Bendy and the Ink Machine” were disappointing and sci-fi game “Nier: Automata” is not what I like in my gameplay; but I bloody love them.
  Same with the “The Flash” television show, the “RWBY” web-animation and even the “Star Wars” universe as a whole. I continue to persist with The Flash despite being pretty sure that my brother dreads my running commentary of its flaws every week; I may not keep up with it but I do eventually catch up with RWBY despite its execution being…lacking, and I feel that nothing in the Star Wars franchise quite lives up to what exists in my head, although it stands head, shoulder and even waist above the others in this paragraph. So why do I keep up with these stories that I apparently can’t talk badly enough about?
  Cause I do love them.
As the title says, I love the concepts behind these stories. Five Nights at Freddie’s (frequently shortened to FNAF because, let’s face it, the title is a pain) is a game where you do the same few things again and again, all to try and prevent being scared; the gameplay is far too tedious for me to play myself and honestly, I’m too much of a coward to actually do so. But the lore woven into the games has captured my heart: murdered childrens’ souls stuck in animatronic bodies that are protective of other children and incredibly violent to adults? It’s so sad, largely because it’s so terrifying and there is more added to the story with each game, cumulating in a sad tale that actually doesn’t quite compare to that in my head (although put that down to preference). It captured my heart, and more importantly my mind.
 Bendy and the Ink Machine starts with a man returning to the animation studio where he used to work, where he helped to bring to life the game’s equivalent of Mickey Mouse (the titular Bendy) only to find that Bendy may have literally been brought to life by ink and madness (and magic). The game is beautifully unique in its design, with backgrounds and items and everything seemingly having been hand-drawn. There are tapes to be found that tell the individual stories of animators, voice actors and even caretakers who were caught up in the chaos, tapes to be collected while avoiding the demonic and malformed beast that was supposed to be Bendy.
 I’ll be brief with Nier: Automata, but this beautiful game with beautiful music explores ideas of machines and emotions and life, at least within my own mind (I never finished watching someone else play the game so I can’t say for sure). The Flash had my heart from the beginning, all through the boring soap opera drama and plot contrivances, just because I love the concept behind the world that it was set in. RWBY is much the same, although it didn’t have me from the beginning; there are little details in RWBY that could become something amazing, but that are unfortunately overshadowed by poor dialogue, trite characters and unfulfilling season-long “stories”.
 And you all at least know vaguely about Star Wars, but it’s the idea of the prequel’s Jedi Order that has me enthralled. I love the idea of an order of warriors, so feared for their combat prowess that they don’t actually need to fight; warriors who could kill you with a telekinetic thought and yet refuse to on principle, yet have enemies who share this power but without the same scruples. And Lightsabers. Lightsabers are cool.
  There is so much to love about Star Wars that unfortunately a lot of the media never seems to embrace, instead erring on the side of convenience.
 As an aspiring author I find all of this fascinating. FNAF and Nier Automata are examples of fascinating stories locked behind gameplay that I’m not interested in, although in the case of the former I do believe that the head-cannon that I developed was actually better than the real story (both of which I have forgotten by now). Nier Automata’s story may be better than my own ideas but as I said, I never finished watching the story.
  Bendy, Flash, RWBY and Star Wars are cases of poor execution though. Spread over five chapters, Bendy started strong but lost what it was that made the early chapters good, going from tense atmosphere to just hit everything with a pipe. The Flash tv show is a victim to its medium: it’s meant to be something for people to watch as they relax in the afternoon with drama, relationships and just a hint of excitement; it was never meant to be a superhero show like the early seasons of Arrow and they are so focused on what I just mentioned that they didn’t put the same effort into being consistent or even all that compelling to someone like me. Not saying that I’m a higher quality viewer, just that I want different things.
  RWBY is a real disappointment to me though, with the most important flaw being the forced climaxes without any real story. I’m not interested in the action when the season doesn’t seem to have led up to it and the best thing I can say for it is that each finale at least feels like a mid-season finale. But I will give it this: season three started (started) to change this for the better.
  Finally, Star Wars (primarily the cartoons) is a problem because it ignores its own rules. Jedi are supposed to be reverent towards the Force, not using it trivially and never to injure; watch any Star Wars cartoon that follows the Jedi and you will see them regularly and callously attacking with the Force. Another weakness would be the lack of rules regulating the Force.
  Any good magic/superpower system has rules or else there is nothing it can’t do and it would seem that there is nothing the Force can’t do. So, if the Jedi apparently don’t follow their own rules on using the Force then what’s the point of lightsabers other than as a symbol? They could crush armies with a wave of the hand; weapons can be torn out of one’s grip and enemy Jedi thrown through walls.
  Imagine a completely independent group who are such capable warriors that they never need to fight. They stroll forward and armies give up. So much can be done with a concept like this and to a writer like myself I would love to have free reign with it.
 And that’s that. So what would I do with these series if I had the power? FNAF is a hard one for me to give suggestions for because as I said, I’ve forgotten, but Bendy and the Ink Machine is easier. As I said the later parts became an action game with fetch quests that nobody asked for, so get rid of the quests, reduce the enemies and retain the disconcerting atmosphere. I’m not asking for anything the creators haven’t proven themselves capable of. Nier is another one that’s hard to give suggestions for as, as I said, I don’t yet know the whole story; what I can say is that it’s the androids and the possible exploration of their humanity (and why they are designed to be so- and I can’t believe I’m using this word- “thicc”) that has me so fascinated.
  The Flash is a victim to its audience so rather than an improvement, I’ll mention what I’d like to see instead: a superhero show. This may seem like an odd thing to say about what is ostensibly a superhero show but it’s really more of a soap opera (which, btw, got it’s name from radio operas being sponsored by soap manufacturers); a real superhero show wouldn’t defeat the best one episode villain yet off camera while instead focusing on character relationships. I mean, way to give a side-character the chance to prove themselves, but at least let us see it. RWBY needs to either give up the idea of series long storylines and slowly build a larger story up, or to better plan each series so that it naturally leads to a climax.
  And finally, Star Wars needs to set and explain the limitations of the Force; doesn’t need to tell us everything, just what it can’t do or if there are means of defending against it. If a Force user can block another Force user, then we need to know that so we don’t just complain about Jedi battles not being who can put the other through a wall first. And finally, I’d love to see people treat the Jedi appropriately, with respect and fear.
 So that’s it. I love these stories for what I think they could be, but what they are honestly puts me off. It’s a shame, but as an (aspiring) author I’m hoping that I can somehow use these as inspiration for my own (and most importantly unique) stories.
 -Note= And no, inspired by does not mean ripped off; break any story down to its bare bones and it will look identical to (and stolen from) almost every other story.
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firstpuffin · 4 years
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So, I have a few thoughts on Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald
Yeah, it’s a mixed bag of good and bad.
  There’s a little too much expansion of Dumbledore and the titular character’s relationship, and speaking of relationships they really put a focus on those of the romantic persuasion but too many just dilute the impact of each of them; and the magic is even less defined than the incredibly undefined of the original. I could go on about the needless backstories, the missing charm of Newt and the others-
  But I do like to stay positive so I’ll just say this. There are very few fantastic beasts in the movie, Fantastic Beasts 2, and given it’s supposed to be defined by Newt’s relationship with them then… well it’s disappointing.
 But on the topic of these fantastic beasts, the ones we do see are really cool. There’s this enormous Chinese cat creature, but with the length of those Chinese dragons, and that is easily distracted by a simple cat toy; we see a Japanese Kappa and given their tendency to literally eat ass (seriously, it’s your insides or your cucumbers so be prepared) I’m glad we don’t see much of it; there are these black, huge eyed cat familiars that are cute in a weird creepy way.
  So at least we do get a few new beasts, even if the familiars are only a temporary antagonist and the cat-dragon thing a plot device.
 We also get a new cast of characters which makes me feel that the old cast should have been abandoned, given it would have worked to only keep Tina, Newt’s love interest. Her sister Queenie and Jacob could have stayed in America, although I did enjoy having him around in the first movie. Unfortunately they are relegated to the back of the background characters, only really present either to set up events in future movies or just because they were in the first, hence why they should have been abandoned.
  Naturally we had to meet the older Scamander brother as well as Newt’s ex and she gets a little backstory but nothing that I felt added to the story or even her character. As a Lestrange and a Slytherin, we saw nothing that wasn’t expected… damnit, I was supposed to be positive.
 Well then, it is surprisingly easy to find good so let’s talk about Grindlewald. As I must have mentioned in my Captain Marvel piece I will ignore an actor’s personal life in the same way I ignore that of a good mechanic; a job and a personal life are two different things so I enjoyed Johnny Depp greatly in this film. He’s dropped Sparrow from his acting and is now a poorly designed but interesting character, focused solely on-
  Fuck. I don’t actually know. See, there’s a lot of talking about things that don’t seem hugely relevant or consistent, and I must have missed a few little things. Like character motivations.
  I don’t wanna be meta and bring in details from the original series, because clearly the writers didn’t. We see the killing curse, ostensibly the only spell that kills; we also see lots of other spells that do a good job at murder. Grindlewald himself orchestrates (literally, using his wand as a baton and everything) a fiery ring of blue flames that only kill his enemies as a hall packed full of trained Aurors, wizards trained to hunt wizards, are burned to death.
  Except of course the main characters, including Newt who apparently never finished learning magic due to being expelled. Yet he can fend off this murder-fire better than the Aurors-
  Nope! Be positive, Puffin! You can do it!
 Just before all of this murder is absolutely the best part of the film where Grindlewald is speaking to an audience, getting them all on his side about- shit. Again, I’m not entirely sure.
  The muggles are not lesser, they are different. Good lesson that. Then he shows future visions of WWII, shocking them all and- what? Now he wants to dominate them? And the Ministry are bad and violent? Proven when an Auror kills another wizard who- attacks first…
 Seriously though, Grindlewald’s speech was great and the delivery fantastic. The lighter bits with Newt and co. were very much enjoyable and there were some very, very cool bits that need to be seen rather than written (Grindlewald’s mark is so much cooler than Voldemort’s).
  Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindlewald needed to cut down on characters, do what the first film did and be fun until the end where it becomes enticingly dark, and to try and do just a little less in only two short hours.
  Otherwise, it really was fun.
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firstpuffin · 4 years
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Why was Batman Begins so very much worse than The Dark Knight?
Or maybe I should go the positive route and ask why The Dark Knight was so much better than Batman Begins. Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy is immensely popular and while it was probably Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy that kickstarted the current superhero movie age, I reckon it was these Batman films that was the impetus for this current era.
  I personally don’t think the movies are all that great, but I do have to admit that the second entry, The Dark Knight, was fantastic, while the first movie was kinda trash. This piece came about after revisiting the series, and I’m only two movies in so The Dark Knight Rises won’t be referenced in this.
 So I think the best starting place for a comparison is the first movie. Like a number of DC movies, such as Man of Steel where I first noticed this, Batman Begins isn’t a movie so much as a dramatized documentary on Batman- er, Beginning.
  They establish his origin story, his childhood and later training, and then there’s a rushed plot focused on some generic threat to Gotham city while Batman himself becomes established as a vigilante. There’s a lot going on and so we move from event to event with boring efficiency. There’s no real development, very little character and the villains are barely established. And I think that last point is the most important.
 The Dark Knight doesn’t need to cover as much which is a huge advantage, both for plot and character development. There is a threat, The Joker, and there is nothing to establish; The Joker himself is a deliberate mystery, Bruce Wayne and- er- what’s her name have had their past covered, and thankfully the movie neglects Harvey Dent’s history.
  This leaves room for the actual story, for the events and the characters to be fleshed out and hoo-boy did they do just that. The Joker is fantastic and the slightly upsetting fact that we don’t actually know his motivations does work to increase his mystique in a way that’s perfect for his character.
  Scarecrow and Ra’s al Ghul were bo-ring. Like really under-established and dull, because the focus was not on characters (who should be the focus as they are what create and direct the story) but on making sure the audience knows what has and is happening.
  In The Dark Knight, The Joker is the plot. He is explored in depth as he works on manipulating everybody else’s psyches. And he takes his time doing so as well. Remember I said how Batman Begins has a lot going on? The Dark Knight has a lot less, allowing for it all to be fleshed out properly.
 Bringing this piece to a conclusion is harder than I expected, so I’ll just summarise.
  Batman Begins does what I often do and tries to accomplish far too much, and would benefit from doing what Spider-Man: Homecoming does and assume the viewers already know his origin. Because it wants to tell us everything though, none of it has any weight.
  The Dark Knight had the messy stuff done in the first film and was allowed to expand on what was important.
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firstpuffin · 3 years
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The problematic character of Laxus Dreyfus from Fairy Tail:
It’s quite common in long running shows to have a one time villain join the heroes: Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Sandman from the Spider-Man comics, and pretty much any manga or anime. But the thing about redeeming the bad guys is that they have to have some redeeming features, and Laxus from the Fairy Tail anime kinda doesn’t.
  Okay, he hesitates once or twice, only to then doubles down on his actions.
  For those that don’t know, and considering the name “fairy tale” put me off for years I wouldn’t blame you, Fairy Tail is a series following the members of the titular magic guild Fairy Tail, and the story ran for quite a long time, even getting a continuation recently. It’s big on friendship and hope and the rest of that crap, but it’s mostly fun and I’ve recently started rewatching it and found a few problems in the writing.
 Laxus Dreyfus is the grandson of Fairy Tail’s master, Makarov, and is one of the four strongest mages in the guild, minus his grandfather. He pops up here and there to proclaim his strength and dislike of the weak, but the guild forgives him because he’s part of the guild; he’s family.
  But eventually he decides he has had enough and stages a coup to take power. Laxus has his ally petrify a number of guild members and threatens the rest into fighting amongst themselves or else their friends will crumble into dust. When this fails he sets up a trap that makes hostages of the entire town the guild is based in.
 The point of all this is to make Makarov surrender his position of guild master, but the stress makes the old man ill and he subsequently can’t do so. This leaves Laxus in the position of giving up, or letting the town fry.
  And he chooses to win.
  You could say that both threats were bluffs, but when his bluffs were called he chose to follow through with them, ready to murder a city of innocents.
  Naturally, as Fairy Tail is an action series our hero Natsu Dragneel fights him and wins while the rest of the guild save the city, but this isn’t the end for Laxus. During the fight Laxus thinks he has successfully killed Natsu and appears genuinely happy about it.
 Laxus seems to become more and more unhinged, even appearing to go berserk, but after being beaten he just becomes- well, he calms down. Either Laxus was genuinely bad, or mentally ill and neither of these were explored and as the series goes on he becomes a stoic but reliable ally to Fairy Tail.
  The fuck happened?
 I think this hit me harder than it might because the previous antagonist, Jellal Fernandes, was shown to have actual issues in that he was seemingly possessed and manipulated by someone (and that’s after being a child slave for years), and when he reappears he doesn’t remember much and the possession has gone. He had a solid reason to be bad, as well as time and motive to redeem himself.
  But Laxus? The most convincing reason I’ve found is that Natsu gave him brain damage during the fight.
 There was another couple of antagonists in a previous arc who also become allies: Juvia Lockser and Gajeel Redfox. Juvia is cursed with magic that causes her to be ostracised and so she joined the first group to accept her, but her heart is healed by the members of Fairy Tail.
  Gajeel on the other hand is a proper bastard, brutally injuring people and getting kicks out of beating on protagonist Lucy Heartfillia, enjoying her screams. He literally gets pissed when she doesn’t scream out and is willing to kill her.
  Then all of a sudden, during the Laxus storyline as it happens, he joins Fairy Tail and isn’t at all the same character. I vaguely remember some background to this popping up later so I might need to upload a retraction, but it doesn’t feel right at all.
 I like character focused fiction the most, action and even plot comes second to interesting and developed characters, which is why I’m having such trouble here. To make it worse, Fairy Tail has some of the most developed characters I’ve ever read; Erza Scarlet was my favourite female character for years until I read Discworld, and even now she’s my favourite female anime character.
  Erza has this complex mix of toughness and softness, masculinity and femininity, strength and vulnerability that I find remarkably compelling, and that’s before her character development that reappears again and again throughout the story.
  Compared to Erza, Laxus is just a flimsy two dimensional character.
 Of course, Erza’s writing isn’t perfect. The author Hiro Mashima develops a disturbing trend of mistreating his female characters, but that pisses me off too much to write about.
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firstpuffin · 4 years
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Defeating an overwhelming antagonist…again..:
A problem with any ongoing story is the need for escalation. Every conflict need to be greater than the previous and while there are a number of different ways to do this (I’m partial to an emotional element as opposed to greater risk), the easiest is simply to up-the-ante.
  The Star Wars prequels went from a single planet to the entire galaxy; superheroes frequently go from the villain of the week to saving everything; romance such as Kimi ni Todoke (which I’ve written about previously) starts with the lead trying to talk make connections and ends on trying to keep their friends, partner and life goal.
  Every genre will have different requirements. Heck, if pornography has ongoing stories then they’d have the same problem, although don’t count on me figuring out how to deal with it. More participants? Dunno.
 I personally love a good action story and it can be dumb like Dragon Ball, goofy like Gintama or serious like Bleach, and I deliberately named manga as examples as that’s the area I’ve chosen to write about today. Why manga? Well in my experience the scale of escalation tends to be somewhat more extreme and far simpler.
  I think I’d like to also write about escalation in other genres such as romance, slice-of-life and sure, comedy, and how they might, and often do, intermingle. But for now I’m gonna talk about the action genre’s Overwhelming Antagonist.
  Again.
  Sorry.
 I’m going to provide three examples this time, all manga that I loved (at one time at least) and while I’ve only just finished one of them, another has recently had a confirmation for its finale being animated. Going from bad to good: Bleach, Naruto, and Gintama.
 So we’re starting with Bleach. Hmm, what do you need to know to understand this? Well after writing this out once already I figured all you actually need to know is why the antagonist sucks.
  The antagonist in question is- uhh, f*ck it. His name is “Yhwach”, but screw figuring out the pronunciation for that, I’m calling him Deus (even though this will influence the SEO of this article, but whatever). Deus is quite possibly the worst example I can think of for a bad antagonist. His unique superpower, The Almighty, is to know everything that will happen, that can happen, and to freakin’ overwrite any future he doesn’t like!
  Like seriously! I can only think of one power that is harder to overcome and that’s the one that’s been floating around online about controlling probability. It’s the epitome of bullshit, and the overwriting-futures-he-doesn’t-like bit only comes out after he should have lost, and that’s what bothers me the most.
  If he had lost right there, it would have been a very satisfying end brought about from the hero’s, Ichigo Kurosaki’s, efforts, working alongside allies and previous antagonists and with some actual tactics; satisfying despite the nonsense of literally everything else in the arc until that point (contradicting established lore and generally making no goddamn sense-). Instead he whips out this Diabolus ex Machina (the villainous Deus ex Machina) so that something the writer included earlier (but hadn’t really established) could finish him off instead.
  This is all quite terrible, but what makes it so egregious is that Bleach had two, two, separate and very much ideal chances to end, but kept going. But basically Deus simply chose not to die, rewriting reality to do so, but couldn’t overwrite his actual loss? Care to explain that to us, upcoming anime?
 SECOND! Naruto.
  Naruto is also pretty interesting to me because I didn’t enjoy it at all for like, 50 episodes (and still watched it? why?) but it eventually became my favourite manga (for a time anyway). Me and my friends were worried about how well it was possible for a 15 year-long story to end, especially after that Bleach debacle, and we sort of didn’t want it to end just to avoid the inevitable tragedy.
  But it was good!
  I know that many people don’t like it, and for some of it I can understand why. The big bad was Madara Uchiha- scratch that (the author did), the antagonist is the up-until-now unknown Kaguya. Yeah, she hadn’t really been established, or even mentioned, up until she appeared and yeah, that was a problem. I think the reason why I gave it a pass was that her appearance was also connected to the origin of the culture of that world and was really quite fascinating, so I let it slide.
  Oh, and I liked her design. That goes a long way.
  Anyway, after a long and drawn out fight against the established (multiple times as-it-were) villain Madara, Kaguya is reincarnated through what can be summarised as the end result of Madara’s hubris and becomes the threat. She is an odd antagonist for an action manga, and not just because she’s a woman.
  Kaguya isn’t strong in the same way as all the other characters, punching and shooting lighting and such, but instead she’s powerful like a deity. She drags the heroes through dimensions and such while still getting her bearings, and I’m pretty sure she is defeated while still half asleep.
  Kaguya’s sudden appearance is the bad, so what’s the good?
  The heroes, our titular Naruto Uzumaki and his best bud the brutal murderer Sasuke Uchiha were, through some situation, gifted a power that they were using to try and seal Madara away like an evil genie, but this sealing power works just as well for Kaguya (if I remember correctly then that’s why she needed to be reincarnated in the first place).
  It all works on established lore and isn’t a stretch in any way.
 And finally, Gintama.
I really would not have expected this from a manga filled with so many scatological jokes that any metaphor would just bring unwanted images to mind, and whose very title is a dick joke.
  The antagonist here is Utsuro, an honest-to-god immortal. Over a thousand years old, heals from anything, dead inside (according to him “utsuro” means hollow), all Utsuro wants to do is destroy everything. I know, what a 2D character, right?
  Actually no. Being immortal, Utsuro has gone through the whole loneliness thing that stories about immortals tend to include, only he’s also had to deal with persecution on top of that. He may heal but he still feels it when his village burns him alive, or stabs him, or locks him away in a prison where he starves until the lock rusts away… the author doesn’t give him the typical “oh woe is me” flashback, but gives us plenty of reason to empathise with him.
  So fighting an immortal, and without the superpowers of the previous two entries, how does our hero Gintoki Sakata defeat him? That requires a bit of a history lesson; history in the manga.
  How many of you know of the Life-stream from Final Fantasy 7? That seems like a solid analogy. It is mentioned a number of times that the planets (plural as Gintama is a sci-fi) have some energy called Altana and while its uses aren’t really explored, we do know that one effect of it is that some people are born of it (also not really explained; planet sex? virgin birth?) and that these people are immortal as long as they have access to this energy, and that right there is the crutch of things.
 One of our leads is an alien whose mother was one of these immortals who left her planet and slowly died because the Altana of another planet won’t help. Utsuro is actually almost killed off of Earth and retreats back- oh, but if he’s only vulnerable away from the Altana then how else can he be beaten?
  In the end it comes down to a couple of factors, both of which are established previously; the time he almost dies, it’s because someone rams a foreign Altana crystal into his chest and our heroes go into battle equipped with these. Secondly, using characters and lore set up and forgotten a long, long time ago, the flow of this Altana is regulated by a small group who, with great difficultly, are able to staunch the energy during the fight.
  With small amounts of the harmful Altana being absorbed into his body through super-healing and no access to his literal life-force, Utsuro is able to be defeated and this is why Gintama is king. Gintama literally used what seemed like throwaway, not at all serious storylines and thoroughly established lore to exploit a weakness in this immortal.
 Compare this with Deus from earlier who has no such weakness and the only thing that can apparently defeat him not only hasn’t been set up, but should have been foreseen and avoided because that’s his power! That’s literally what he does! But Utsuro has this flaw and time was taken to establish a way to take advantage of it.
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firstpuffin · 4 years
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Newt Scamander: we need more like him
I’m not going into detail about the movie Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, as good at it is, instead focusing on the hero Newt Scamander who is pretty brilliant. Of course I am slightly biased as I can relate to him in his awkwardness and difficulty with people, and I’m not saying we need more characters who can’t make eye contact (although Newt and Matt Murdock are fantastic recent examples). But an atypical action hero who isn’t all brawn and sociopathy is new and far more interesting.
 I recently watched a video on how Newt defies the toxic masculinity that we see so often (and ironically seen in the character of Captain Marvel), which prompted me to rewatch the movie and subsequently write this.
              Fantastic Beasts is an enjoyable exploration of race relations, a secret society, animal protection and more. The movie is funny, has endearing characters and a simple yet engaging plot. Honestly, it’s all the more enjoyable for the lack of action and action-centred hero.
 Yes, there is action, and up until the finale it is usually fun and light-hearted, with the climax taking things down a dark path. But even during this darkness Newt doesn’t follow suit. The big bad Obscurus creature is wrecking shit up, the Graves fella is obviously up to something and is very aggressive about it, and the muggles are hungry for revenge.
              And Newt spends the whole time trying to save the monster. He’s a good, kind man, exactly as we see all throughout the movie and at the end he’s kind even to Graves. Newt is obviously skilled, using magic without a sound, but he’s never shown to be anything especially- uh, special. Perhaps I should have reworded that but I like it.
              Anyway, Newt is just Newt and his strength comes from his love of magical beasts, and all living things presumably. You know all that sappy shit they love to talk about? His compassion is his power? Well Newt is probably the only case where this is true. It’s his knowledge of these beasts, knowledge that came from his love, that allows him to use them to his advantage.
 A lot of toxic masculinity comes from the expectation for men to be strong, unemotional, and aggressive; Newt is strong in his own way with only a little cross-over with these expectations, that is his willingness to act in dangerous situations. Otherwise he’s emotional, caring and gentle; we see him nursing baby animals in a very typically “feminine” way, he refers to himself as “mummy” with these animals, and he can’t for the life of him make eye-contact with strangers. Nervous, extremely focused and clumsy- damn, that’s very close to myself.
 It’s nice to see a hero I can relate to for once, but more than that it’s refreshing to see a new type of character in the lead. Things repeated get boring and I’m excited to see a change in this area.
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