#and anyway hes addressing the balrog so whats the deal

[sol1056]

set it up and pay it off

This was going to be part of another post which I ended up breaking into two. Finally had a chance to get to this tonight. 

I’m watching tDP and istg I’m trying my hardest not to compare it ... but every mistake [other shows] made, tDP is doing a right (and an amazing right). But in terms of writing?? The fact that they solve small issues without dragging it to the next season making the audience tired and not interested?? Amazing!!

Hello, payoffs! Not only does tDP do setups and payoffs right, it knows how to gracefully remind us, and then delivers those payoffs that’ll have the most bang for the screentime.  

For those unfamiliar with the term, if the classic chekov’s gun is the setup, the moment the gun is used (in whatever way) is the payoff. Payoffs are delightful things, and very little compares when it comes to satisfying readers (regardless of the nature of the payoff). Humans like getting the answers to questions.

Behind the cut: types of setups and payoffs, four things to remember, choosing payoffs and their role in the narrative, the dangers of doing them cheaply, and how to destroy a payoff’s weight. 

Spoilers for the first episode only; everything else is vague or uses non-tDP examples to illustrate.  

a bit about setups and payoffs 

When the story asks a question or raises a possibility, that’s the setup (aka the gun on the mantle), and the payoff is the answer. This is not the same as a character asking a question; setups and payoffs are designed for the audience. 

Frex, talking about bad weather is effectively asking, ‘what if the weather got really bad?’ Now when the tornado strikes, the audience was primed for the possibility. A setup can be to show a character’s skill, so the audience isn’t surprised when the character devises an ingenious solution in the finale. Odd descriptions and curious hints will spike the tension and raise the question, ‘what if this house is haunted?’ long before a ghost even appears on the page. 

Most stories have an overall question, like ‘can A win the Kentucky Derby’ or ‘can B find true love’ --- this is often what we call the throughline. But stories are also full of ongoing questions for the characters, and also about them (or their world, their backstory, their perspectives). Some get answered right away, some explained later, and some, well, never. 

Nearly every conversation between Viren and Harrow raises about twenty questions and answers perhaps five. The characters know (or think they know) the answers to a lot of these questions; their dialogue works on the level of exchanging information, and also to provoke or establish possibilities in the viewer’s mind. When we later see Ruunan’s skills or Amaya’s rank or some other detail that resolves the setup, it’s an aha! moment.  

four things to remember

1. Setups should make sense at that point in the story. If a character is busy trying to master unfamiliar machinery, it’s probably not the most appropriate time to mention the character is a croquet champion. If the character is in a room with no windows in the building’s interior, it’s going to be awkward if you decide it’s time for them to worry about the strange weather. 

2. A setup needs to make sense in hindsight. If the ghost died by drowning, and your tension-raising questions are all prompted by lightbulbs breaking and the smell of an open fire... that’s not going to make much sense, thematically. 

3. A setup must be intriguing. Say a story raises questions about a character’s animosity or honesty. If the reveal is, well, he always looks like that, or she’s always nervous, the reader’s going to apply that retroactively and decide that question had no point. (That’s a fast track to losing an audience’s trust, by the way.) If your setups are boring, the audience will find the payoff boring. 

4. Don’t delay all your payoffs until the end. You don’t want to answer everything too fast, or you’re losing a great source of tension. But you can’t put off answering for too long, or the audience will get frustrated and quit. (Or they’ll hold on just long enough to get the one answer they really want, and quit then.) 

answer this, not that

As tDP’s three protagonists move through the season, they know nothing of the larger intrigue going on, and they have no clue what lies ahead. Resolving any of those other questions might answer some world-detail for us, but they’re not an immediate concern for the protagonists. That makes those setups less valuable for an emotional payoff, because they don’t hold as much story-weight, comparatively.

What tDP did so well was that it never lost sight of the protagonists’ own questions. The writers then identified what they could answer without giving everything away --- and of those questions, they chose to answer the ones with the greatest urgency and emotional weight. 

To understand why you’d answer those in the middle of the story, it helps to understand what payoffs do, in the narrative. 

the role of payoffs in the narrative 

I’ve talked before about the promise of the premise, and the payoff of the setup is a parallel to that concept. When the story sets up a question (a premise), that payoff is where it delivers on the promise. It’s not always good news. Payoffs are consequences; sometimes it’s more powerful to have everything go wrong. 

Here’s an example of a mid-story payoff that doesn’t have emotional weight, vs several that do. In LotR, the fellowship is forced to go through the Mines of Moria. This is a double setup: one, can Gandalf remember his way through the labyrinthine halls, and two, can they get through without alerting whatever now lives in the mines. The tension hangs on those setups, and the story delivers four payoffs for it. 

Gandalf halts the party while he tries to remember which branch in the path is correct. When he does, it’s a payoff, and it does double duty: yes, he remembers enough to guide the fellowship (what a relief) and now they can proceed (as opposed to spending the rest of the book wandering around in the dark). We readers get a breather from the oppressive tension, and the story is pushed forward.

For at least a chapter or so, Gimli’s been insistent they should go through Moria. A marvelous place, distant kin sure to show them dwarven hospitality, etc. Seeing Moria is a question that only appears once they reach the mountains, and Gimli’s interest in it is mostly from a need to impress: his constant talk becomes another setup.

The second payoff comes Gimli forces a detour to investigate a tomb. We get a short passage where Gimli reads the eye-witness account of the mine’s last occupants. It’s an emotional payoff... but only for Gimli. It’s certainly not much of a payoff from the perspective of a reader who’s focused on the urgency driving them through the mines. Had the mines been a planned part of the route from the beginning, with the entire company desperate for the safe shelter, the mine’s disaster might’ve carried greater emotional weight.  

When Pippin knocks a helmet down a well, it’s a third payoff, addressing the setup created by Gandalf's strict warning about stealth. The tension rises but it’s alleviated in another way: the setup has been fulfilled. Now to find out the consequences: a fight scene, a chase, and the situation turns dire.

Gandalf’s fight with the Balrog is the fourth payoff, pushing the setup to its limit (whether they can all get through safely), but also resolving a setup planted much earlier in the story. That is, that Gandalf is what will make the journey possible, and keep them safe (and together). 

That setup (of Gandalf’s necessity) is fulfilled when the story yanks him out of the picture, and it comes with substantial emotional weight. We’ve had seventeen chapters showing how much Frodo admires, even adores, Gandalf. Not only is the result of that setup potentially threatening the fellowship’s success, it’s also emotionally devastating for Frodo and the other hobbits. 

In sum, payoffs do three things in the narrative: they remind readers of the stakes by delivering smaller consequences along the way, they deliver emotional beats (including the catharsis of laughter if the payoff is the punchline to a humorous setup), and they regulate the story’s tension and pacing.  

disingenuous setups make for cheap payoffs

If you look at some of the turning points in tDP, there are payoffs previous to the final episode. Think of every place the story is begging a question, and you end up with a whole lot of chekov’s guns; tDP practically has three mantles’ worth. 

If the elves swear an oath to fulfill their duty, what happens if they fail? If the boys can’t protect their prize, what will happen to them, to Rayla, to the humans and elves? If the boys trust Rayla with their prize, will she betray them? If the elves assassinate King Harrow, will the other human countries march to war? And what’s the deal with that mirror, anyway? 

What makes tDP especially satisfactory is how it plays with closure before any payoff. This can be a little tricky; it requires a narrative voice that’s gained the audience’s trust. In short, you take any given question, let the characters acknowledge the consequences of failure, and then let them accept this as the price of making their choice. Skip this step, and any reversal will feel cheap. 

Take the pivotal moment in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. From the moment Edmund meets the White Witch, he’s set on a path to betray his siblings. With Narnia’s prophecy hanging on the need for all four children to sit on the thrones at Cair Paravel, the story has setup Edmund’s actions to have significant payoff. If the White Witch kills him, the prophecy won’t be fulfilled. 

When the Witch delivers her ultimatum, and Aslan decides to offer himself as substitute sacrifice, Susan and Lucy end up bearing witness. Aslan explains his choice (but not all of his intentions), and the moment is heavy with emotional weight as the girls realize the consequences of their brother’s actions. The story doesn’t shirk from their grief, either; it’s a long passage of their distress as they do their best to undo --- or at least ease --- the worst of the Witch’s damage. 

The contrast of that seeming abject loss with Aslan’s return --- and his explanation of the loophole that only he knew about --- could’ve been a cheap trick. What makes it such a pivotal moment is that neither of the point-of-view characters (Susan and Lucy) have any idea of what lies ahead, nor does the story ever slyly wink in the reader’s direction. 

In tDP, there’s an ongoing looming consequence of Rayla’s choices, and she goes through the stages of handling that with all the gravity of what she believes to be true. The story never contradicts her beliefs; in fact, it reinforces them repeatedly, closing each additional option until only one terrible consequence remains. 

We can hope that some loophole might exist, but the story never winks in our direction: it does nothing to reinforce that hope, instead pushing the setup inexorably towards its logical payoff. Like tLtWatW, nothing breaks the looming anguish of the setup’s apparent consequences, just as Aslan’s resigned wish for the girls to look away closes the door on hope that he'll at least fight his fate.

embrace the weight of a payoff

There’s an excellent video that deconstructs the use of bathos in Marvel movies (good to watch if this paragraph confuses you). Bathos is an abrupt turn from the serious to the trivial, which parallels a cheap payoff in that it tips its hand. It tells viewers: hey, we’re not taking this seriously, so no reason you should, either. 

This is where tDP --- like Trollhunters --- really shines, because it never raises the veil to show the writers behind the curtain. Too often, stories (especially in current media) back away from committing to the payoff; it’s almost like we’ve got a generation of TV/film writers afraid to show any depth of emotion. The tension gets above a 2, and the writers retreat to a joke.

There’s plenty of humor in tDP; it’s filled to the brim with witty lines even funnier in context. What keeps it from being bathos (too much) is that it’s rarely an intentional quip on the part of the characters. Rayla is deadly serious when she tells the boys, “I’m not falling for that flashing frog trick, again!” If the writers expected me to laugh, the narrative doesn’t allow even a beat as indication. The story treats its characters --- and every payoff --- with a sincere gravity. 

I think the crucial ingredient comes in how the narrative understands itself: as an intimate portrayal of a character in this situation, vs that of an actor onstage before an audience. You may’ve heard that over-quoted bit about ‘dance like no one is watching’ --- the same is true for stories: they must unroll as if there’s no audience other than the characters in that scene, in that moment. 

This goes back to a setup that revolves around characterization such as honesty or duplicity. If a character cries in private, the reader’s assumption is that this character’s grief isn’t meant to be seen as feigned. With no audience (as far as the character knows), there’s no reason for pretense. If the payoff later is a reveal the character was faking all along, the story did worse than laughing at its own characters: it lied to the audience. 

It set up a premise which the audience trusted as valid, only to deliver a payoff that hinged on the audience's gullibility. If bathos trivializes an emotional payoff, a story’s duplicity mocks the audience’s engagement. 

A story can lie to its characters, can mislead them into thinking they have options when they have none, can maneuver them into thinking they have no options beyond one... but a story should never, ever, lie to the audience. If there’s a setup, its payoff must be honest. 

To paraphrase Gaiman, a story doesn’t have to be real to be true --- and the place we most often glimpse a story’s truth in how it handles its payoffs.  

#the dragon prince #writing #story structure #setups and payoffs #sol thinks about stuff

[chiliadicorum]

Only Seven Balrogs

I’m writing this because I know people might argue what I was talking about in my last post, in that I’m completely wrong or mistaken because there were a ton of Balrogs and way more than two were killed pre-LotR and “just look at the early writings!” Obviously, what I have to say is in adherence with Tolkien’s statement that “There should not be supposed more than say 3 or at most 7 ever existed.” [HoME Annals of Aman, section 2 X.80]

When dealing with earlier canon and determining if it’s legit or not, I follow a simple rule: if it’s contradicted by later canon, or if Tolkien outright dismisses or changes it, then it’s no longer viable. Believe me, if early canons weren’t overthrown by the later, more established canon, the earlier battle of Utumno would be hardcore canon for me through and through. Along with the original conversation between Thingol and Beren, to name a few (especially the original conversation between those two). But they’re not, because Tolkien revised them and made new decisions about them. 

Arda originally had a very different shape and structure, but that was changed. Beren was an Elf, but that was changed. Mermaids, however, which can be found in the early writings, were never contradicted or dismissed and so I still believe they exist in Arda. In the early writings it was said that Melkor ripped the wings off Eagles when they wouldn’t tell him what he wanted, and since nothing contrary was ever later written, that specific canon is still canon to me. Hence why, in my Glorfindel essay, even though his duel with the Balrog is in those early writings, I still consider it legitimate canon because there’s nothing to contradict it (indeed, his slaying a Balrog carried on into the later lore). Determining what to use from the early mythology can be very difficult precisely because not every thing was rejected.

But Tolkien’s Balrogs cannot claim the same stability in the lore as Glorfindel’s story. 

For one, those who study the lore will have noticed how the actual number of Balrogs fluctuated and decreased as Tolkien’s conception of his world evolved. Secondly, those earlier Balrogs weren’t even Maiar (so if we’re to accept the idea of the Balrogs being numerous as canon, shouldn’t we also accept that they’re not Maiar, just another type of creature Morgoth created?). In the early writings, there were hundreds of Balrogs and in other accounts, they numbered in the thousands and people were killing them left and right (Ecthelion being one of those people, along with Tuor). 

But in the “finalized” lore, if you will (namely the time of the published Silmarillion), the Balrogs were no longer creations of Morgoth, but Umaiar and far more powerful and dangerous and destructive. And so that’s why it becomes much more impressive that Glorfindel and Ecthelion both slew a Balrog each, why their notoriety and praise is as great as it is.

I accepted Tolkien’s later statement(s) about the Balrogs on their own, but those rather large revisions made to the Balrogs themselves also convinced me that limiting the number to seven or to at least a very small amount was certainly Tolkien’s last intention regarding those demons.

Because here’s the rub: I don’t personally believe there were only seven Balrogs. As in, only seven Balrogs ever. Even though Tolkien uses that word “ever”, but I’m inclined to believe that’s from Elven perception (I’ll address that in a moment). I don’t really believe there were thousands or even hundreds, but certainly dozens before the construction of Arda began. Or maybe there were hundreds, I don’t know (the host of Maiar coming into Ea was never numbered). But I like to believe that the Valar/Maiar defeated those numerous Balrogs before the Awakening of the Elves. The Wars of the Valar lasted thousands upon thousands upon thousands of years, and I find it highly believable that those Balrogs were battling against the Ainur alongside Melkor and that the majority of them were defeated. And that those remaining seven or dozen or whatever escaped into the World no less than Sauron did (twice) where they then fell asleep for like five Ages.

That’s why, in my post, I said there were “only seven Balrogs”, in that at the very least, Elves/Men/Dwarves only knew of the existence of seven of them. They were only aware of seven. Only seven were ever seen, that kind of thing. I mean, it doesn’t explicitly say that all the remaining Balrogs awoke at Melkor’s call. Some could in fact still be sleeping! (that certainly seemed to be the case for the Balrog in Moria lol) So no, I don’t believe that there were only ever seven Balrogs or that only seven remained in Arda (I’d say a dozen, maybe two at most). But that only seven took part in Morgoth’s siege of Beleriand? Yes. That I believe. Maybe only seven woke up at Melkor’s scream.

The reason I said I suspect it might be from Elven perception is simply me accounting for the bias/limited perspective the history was written with. That, and Tolkien also talks a little bit later about the Maiar who followed Melkor and those who became Balrogs, and those Maiar were more than a few: 

“For of the Maiar many were drawn to his splendour in the days of his greatness, and remained in that allegiance down into his darkness”

Tolkien then made an additional note, consisting of:

“These were the (ealar) spirits who first adhered to him in the days of his splendour, and became most like him in his corruption [Tolkien then proceeds on to name and describe the Balrogs]”

That’s why I suspect there were more Balrogs than seven, because the subject of all this is the Balrogs and the mention of the Maiar and their corruption were listed as being “many”. Thus, why I partly think many Balrogs did actually exist in the beginning but were defeated until only seven remained at the time of the Awakening of the Elves, when the Children’s own timeline began. 

However, I could be and am possibly very wrong and we should be taking Tolkien’s use of “ever” literally since it is in fact a footnote that was written by him and not Pengolodh. And it does make sense if there truly were only ever seven. Taking into account how unique Balrogs were based on what Tolkien later wrote (most noticeably in The Later Quenta Silmarillion (I) MR.165 §18, where those quotes above comes from), I can’t think of a good reason not to take Tolkien literally with that. Though Melkor corrupted others into his service and “bred many other monsters” after indwelling Arda, the Balrogs were ever Melkor’s greatest “weapon” (or of his greatest) and like in many military ventures, the greater or more valuable something is, the less there is of it.

To go on a small tangent, part of me theorizes that those hundreds of monsters were renamed to what was conceived in the later lore as the Boldogs: 

"the name of a kind of creature: the Orc-formed Maiar, only less formidable than the Balrogs[...]Morgoth had many servants, the oldest and most potent of whom were immortal, belonging indeed in their beginning to the Maiar; and these evil spirits like their Master could take on visible forms. Those whose business it was to direct Orcs often took Orkish shapes, though they were greater and more terrible." [HoME Myths Transformed X.418]

Their description certainly fits the earlier stature of the Balrogs. Boldogs are canon and their numbers aren’t given, so maybe that’s where that big number of monsters went? This is only a theory, and one I don’t fully commit to.

Anyway.

By all means, everyone believe what he or she chooses! I know in the end, nothing in the lore is 100% concrete (thanks a lot, Tolkien), but I’m just trying to explain where I’m coming from and my thought process behind this. I’ve studied the lore and its infuriating contradictions so much that, for the sake of writing fanfiction and metas and hcs and stuff, I finally just developed that rule, which has so far stood the test of time, at least for me. 

#balrogs #silmarillion #tolkien #glorfindel #ecthelion #morgoth #it seems wrong that this disclaimer winded up longer than the post it's about #chili indie essays