A SRS BSNSS Idealogue on the Originality of Genre Conventions

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A SRS BSNSS Idealogue on the Originality of Genre Conventions

Post by Peregrin »

Shroom Man 777 wrote:I've chatted with PREGRIN about the composition of Louise Exner and Karl's geek squad - who "mostly attend HTX (a specialized type of high school we have in Denmark, that focuses on engineering/technology stuff) but there'd also be some biologists" - and I made the following suggestions:

Samira - Biology student, environmentalist hippie-girl, dark-skinned redhead, friendly, cheerful and outgoing, friend of small animals and plants and possibly bi-sexual. Works part time with Louise as a waitress at a small local diner. She gets very touchy-feely with Louise and both of them enjoy a lot of... extracurricular activities together. Is also a certified emergency rescuer and knows first-aid and stuff.
I frankly think that whatever skinship-gropey things happening between Louise and Samira would just be rather nonsexual, kinda like how some teenage girls actually like to do that without any sexual connotations. I actually think it should be downplayed, not out of prudishness but frankly I think it's like you're emphasising it in this post more for base fanservice than for anything really related to characterization and if I suggested it (can't remember right now) then guilty as charged. Reading it now it just comes across as crass and gratuitious.

Also, be careful not to make Samira too much of a neo-hippy stereotype. That'd be lazy writing.
Nick - Aspiring inventor, together with his heterosexual life partner Anton create all sorts of contraptions that are mostly rather (very) unsafe for human use, often dabbling into the electrically unsafe realms of Tesla technology as well as Mythbusters-esque stuff. He might want to patent something and make a shitful of money and often shouts "We'll be rich!"...?

Anton - School laboratory, garage and backyard mad scientist most concerned with Tesla technology and other outrageous home-built things, a Nikola Tesla wannabe with even more outrageous ideas than his heterosexual life partner Nick. Perhaps he is less concerned with being "rich!" and more concerned with "science!"...?
Maybe we could write them as parodies of Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage, respectively? :lol: Or would that be too obvious a route?

Anyway, Perhaps Anton could also be in talks with getting a job as an electrician. For some reason I also want Anton to attempt building a nuclear reactor in his backyard, which a boy scout actually did in the real world. Maybe he could try patenting his Backyard Nuclear Reactor and sell kits to construct those at home over the internet? As for Nick, I have the idea that Nick is not his real name but he's just called that because of his Nikola Tesla fixation.
Philip - Pasty, tall and skinny bookworm with rimmed glasses, spends almost all his time in the library reading obscure literature and other things in a bizzaro quest for (not-so) useless knowledge. Erudite and most sociable with Karl, who is one of the few who can communicate with him on the same wavelength. Think of a pair of PREGRINs, or a H.P. Lovecraft wannabe but not as insane as the old man. Often holds Karl's hand, or stays uncomfortably close to him.
I like to think of Philip as myself 2-3 years ago, and Karl as myself now though both would ultimately be idealized versions of either. Actually, maybe Philip could be more of a right-brain counterpart of the character type Jeff Goldblum usually plays? I can imagine him deliberately seeking out knowledge that appears to be useless under the premise that the weirder the information the weirder the situation will be when it finally is required.
Katja and Kristina - One of them is a socially-aware left-leaning political activist, a bleeding heart liberal most concerned with the welfare of the poor people and societal justice and stuff like that - think Chloe from Smallville. The other one would be a sociable fashionista who is also an aspiring actress, fond of fancy clothes and maybe cosplaying too - think Monique from Kim Possible. I do not know which one is which, flip a coin.
You know, I'm probably starting to sound like Sarah Connor in T2 here but I find it troubling that out of the three females on Louise's geek squad you turn the first one into a yuri fanservice object and the other two you give less characterization than the male ones... in addition to making it look like they just hang around and don't help with as much as the males.

Then there's how we seem to have succumbed to the "mother nature, father science" cliché in having none of the women specialize in something technological. I think we need to make a second draft (at least) of what these characters should be like. It's fairly late in the evening, might post my own ideas tomorrow if I find time.
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Re: [General]The Return of CHARACTER CONCEPTS

Post by Vagrant Orpheus »

Gender equality is for wimps! Reclaim the penis of science Per!

Stereotypical writing is awesome if embraced wholeheartedly and with foreknowledge that it is blatant stereotyping.
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Re: [General]The Return of CHARACTER CONCEPTS

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Shroomy didn't seem to parody/subvert the stereotypes that much, and even then there's still the entire "promoting a mindset under guise of parodying it" phenomenon which is an accusation often lobbed at Frank Miller. By the way, I think this kind of stuff is one of several reasons there are so few female contributors to OmniverseOne, it's keeping them away because there's a fog hanging over it making the whole thing look like a cancerous tumour of fanboy wank which it doesn't have to be... plus it's symptomatic of a lower level of, I dunno, professionalism in writing than I currently strive towards as a paradigm.

(and before you ask, neither SiegeTank nor Ford Prefect have hacked into my account :P )
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Re: [General]The Return of CHARACTER CONCEPTS

Post by Vagrant Orpheus »

Subverting or parodying? Nah, there's something delicious in just playing it straight. Everything nowadays has to be subversions, aversions, deconstructions and all that wanky pretentious crap. Straight up indulging in the stereotypes can be fun. There's no need to strive for levels of supreme professionalism and subtlety in Comix, especially not when writing about the pals of a girl superspy seemingly based on Kim Possible :P

As for the accusation of it being crass and gratuitous, yeah, perhaps it is. But these are high school kids. Everything about them is going to be crass and gratuitous, given how teenagers tend to be a lot more free with their opinions and actions these days.

As for women in OmniverseOne? Eh, there are some but no, not many. That's symptomatic of a lot more than just OmniverseOne though, it's a whole culture of sci-fi writing and the like. Now, our verses can be anything we want, sure, but we mainly draw our members out of sites like SDN, and previously the site had been sci-fi verses only, and before that was derived from what was essentially Starcraft fanfiction. Yeah, videogame fiction. Sorry Per, but trying to make this place less of a guys' club isn't going to bring the women in, because at the first impressions it'll still seem the same. It'll still look like a sci-fi site, it'll still come across as one, and unless people are going to go out to sources other than SDN and the like to actively promote this place to the female tribe you'll not notice any changes, no matter how many female scientists and weak males you put into your fiction.
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Re: [General]The Return of CHARACTER CONCEPTS

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I've for years strived toward a healthy balance of male/female empowerment in my fiction (god that sounds so pretentious, doesn't it?) but I have to agree with Orph here: that on its own isn't going to entice many potential female contributors because, let's face it, it's not what potential contributors are primarily attracted by.

Frankly as long as our playing-it-straight/fanboy-wank (call it what you want) doesn't devolve into misogyny - be it blatant or veiled - I can't say I care overly much about the lopsided membership of our site; it's been that way for as long as I remember, not just here but on practically every webboard I frequent.
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Re: [General]The Return of CHARACTER CONCEPTS

Post by Vagrant Orpheus »

Siege wrote:Frankly as long as our playing-it-straight/fanboy-wank (call it what you want) doesn't devolve into misogyny
Does this mean The Crow is no longer welcome? ;)
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Re: [General]The Return of CHARACTER CONCEPTS

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Let's call it the exception that proves the rule :).
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Re: [General]The Return of CHARACTER CONCEPTS

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Vagrant Orpheus wrote:Subverting or parodying? Nah, there's something delicious in just playing it straight. Everything nowadays has to be subversions, aversions, deconstructions and all that wanky pretentious crap. Straight up indulging in the stereotypes can be fun.
I don't find playing clichés straight to be entertaining. A relief and escape from the familiar is what's entertaining, and playing clichés straight represents going back to the familiar without any attempt to cast a new perspective on it. Okay, maybe that kind of regression can be fun in a nostalgic way but to be honest uncritical nostalgia is nowhere as entertaining as pure audacity. Remember why you started liking the stories you're nostalgic for now, and it will likely be that they were adventurous and represented a window into worlds wilder and more colourful than the one you're familiar with.

This isn't to say that you shouldn't use familiar genre conventions at all, just that while you can use as many clichés as you want you should never play them straight and it's also worth considering that a lot of particular twists upon clichés have become clichés on their own.
There's no need to strive for levels of supreme professionalism and subtlety in Comix, especially not when writing about the pals of a girl superspy seemingly based on Kim Possible :P
Do you realize that Kim Possible's appeal in the first place came from that TV series' irreverent attitude genre conventions of action-adventure cartoons? It might have used some clichés but it nearly always found a way to make fun of them in the process.

As for Miss Exner, I'm planning to take her in different directions than her immediate source of inspiration. For example: The first of my currently planned stories about her is going to be more of a deadpan neo-beatnik roadtrip comedy with few explicitly fantastic elements, think Jim Jarmusch doing H. P. Lovecraft - only the faintest hints that this isn't taking place in a world just like ours. Others are going to revolve around Nazi Occultism (taken more seriously this time than my old playing of the Theozoologist as a comedical figure, this time he's going to be dangerous) and philosophical cyberpunk space opera that's gonna play like Knight Rider by way of Philip K. Dick at his most whacked-out if I'm gonna use comparisons.
As for the accusation of it being crass and gratuitous, yeah, perhaps it is. But these are high school kids. Everything about them is going to be crass and gratuitous, given how teenagers tend to be a lot more free with their opinions and actions these days.
Point taken, just reflecting back on my high school years I understand where you're coming from.
As for women in OmniverseOne? Eh, there are some but no, not many. That's symptomatic of a lot more than just OmniverseOne though, it's a whole culture of sci-fi writing and the like. Now, our verses can be anything we want, sure, but we mainly draw our members out of sites like SDN, and previously the site had been sci-fi verses only, and before that was derived from what was essentially Starcraft fanfiction. Yeah, videogame fiction.
Thanks for playing, but I have in the past made some actual effort to recruit new Omniverse contributors from other forums than SDN which were mostly unsuccessful. That said, maybe I should resume doing so. Also, if it's symptomatic of the whole sci-fi culture then that's more reason we need a sea change: One of the reasons I've progressively lost more and more interest in science-fiction, both the literary genre and associated fan subculture, is how hermetic and insular it is. This is something I blame on its self-styled image of intellectualism, which is largely unearned if Sturgeon's Law ("90% of everything is crap") is to be taken as reliable. Nonetheless the view that many sci-fi fans and writers have of the genre being inherently more intellectual than others seems to have become widespread enough to foster a reluctance to look to new horizons (hah!) outside the genre. It also results in lazy elitism, though it's frustrating that sci-fi is often dismissed as "not real literature" the way many people associated with the genre turn that mentality upside down and subscribe to it doesn't do wonders either. (compare-contrast the state of horror fiction, which is equally hermetic but in that genre it's a result of anti-intellectual reverse snobbery instead)

I might sound hypocritical here because chances are high that I've been guilty of that in the past, however I make it clear that I'm also criticizing myself here. Or my younger self, I've become increasingly extroverted after starting at college which has made my artistic tastes much wider while at the same time my standards have gotten higher. From this vantage point the narrowness of my past tastes and views look largely like fanboy myopia, and I'm even less satisfied with my past writings than I've always been by default. :lol: Whatever, since I've also seen these follies and errors in myself and matured past them or at least made an effort to do so (which is probably easier said than done)
Sorry Per, but trying to make this place less of a guys' club isn't going to bring the women in, because at the first impressions it'll still seem the same. It'll still look like a sci-fi site, it'll still come across as one, and unless people are going to go out to sources other than SDN and the like to actively promote this place to the female tribe you'll not notice any changes, no matter how many female scientists and weak males you put into your fiction.
At the very least we can make this an unorthodox sci-fi community avoiding the usual vices of the genre in our writing and general attitude, and to be honest we haven't really promoted it enough to people outside the sci-fi "scene" to really corroborate what you say. (again, here I'm criticizing myself too)

You know, OZ Comix! is at least nominally supposed to be a pastiche of superhero comics? Well, the only reason that I think the superhero genre didn't dry up at some point in the eighties is that within the last 30 years you had an influx of (mostly British) writers who injected it with the attitude of subversive 1970s underground comix. You know: the Alan Moores, Frank Millers, Steven Grants, Warren Ellises and Grant Morrisons... of course, most of those I've mentioned increasingly lost interest in superheroes through the 1990s and I reckon the only reason the genre still exists to large extent in an easily recognizable form is the fans' hunger for more of the same.

Imagine if Westerns continued to be the dominant type of Hollywood action movie even after the Italians deconstructed it in the 1960s and you'll have a good analogy of how ridiculous the premacy of superheroes in American comics is, especially the de-evolution of the iconoclastic underground comix attitude into "grim'n'gritty" stock cynicism. Fortunately, that didn't happen and when westerns get made today they're usually highly unconventional... Dead Man, Unforgiven, The Proposition, The Assassination of Jesse James and so on. Guess why? Because it's accepted that it's a played out genre and you have to do something original if you want your Western to be worth bothering with.
Does this mean The Crow is no longer welcome? ;)
The Crow's a pretty transparent satire of the dark and edgy 1980s Batman, so I think we can keep him. :mrgreen:

Siege wrote:I've for years strived toward a healthy balance of male/female empowerment in my fiction (god that sounds so pretentious, doesn't it?) but I have to agree with Orph here: that on its own isn't going to entice many potential female contributors because, let's face it, it's not what potential contributors are primarily attracted by.
Yeah, the entire "girls need role models" mentality is just as silly and counterproductive... again, its relative absence in Japanese fiction is one of many reasons that anime has a more even gender distribution in fandom than western SF. I'm also putting some effort to avoid it myself since some of my past characterization is pretty guilty of that, maybe not enough?

Anyway: What I criticized was just how Shroomy had put more characterization into male characters than female characters, or fetishized female characters to extents that are ridiculous in stories that aren't expressly pornographic while not doing the same to male characters. It's pretty easy to argue that falls into the categories of casual misogyny and just plain bad writing. It's crass and tacky.

Can any of the female posters here offer a perspective? I think you're probably better judges of what's misogynistic and what isn't...


It might look rather awkward that I've went off on several tangents here in this post, but this could be because I've been planning like forever to write an essay for the forum explaining my recent loss of interest in the sci-fi genre which has a great deal to do with my reduced activity on this forum. I figured that when Orpheus brought the topic up and I had an opportunity to vent, I should better strike when the iron was hot or I'd never get around to doing it.
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Re: [General]The Return of CHARACTER CONCEPTS

Post by Vagrant Orpheus »

Peregrin wrote:
Vagrant Orpheus wrote:Subverting or parodying? Nah, there's something delicious in just playing it straight. Everything nowadays has to be subversions, aversions, deconstructions and all that wanky pretentious crap. Straight up indulging in the stereotypes can be fun.
I don't find playing clichés straight to be entertaining. A relief and escape from the familiar is what's entertaining, and playing clichés straight represents going back to the familiar without any attempt to cast a new perspective on it. Okay, maybe that kind of regression can be fun in a nostalgic way but to be honest uncritical nostalgia is nowhere as entertaining as pure audacity. Remember why you started liking the stories you're nostalgic for now, and it will likely be that they were adventurous and represented a window into worlds wilder and more colourful than the one you're familiar with.

This isn't to say that you shouldn't use familiar genre conventions at all, just that while you can use as many clichés as you want you should never play them straight and it's also worth considering that a lot of particular twists upon clichés have become clichés on their own.
Sorry, but since the 80s or so deconstructing and subverting cliches has become more cliche than just running with it straight up. This is my opinion at the moment, and obviously particularly good subversions or such are fine, but for the most part lots of people tend to avoid cliches simply to avoid cliches. And in turn, this avoidance of them has become so cliche in and of itself that I delight in seeing cliches played straight now, as long as it's all handled well. After all, these cliches became cliches because they worked and people liked them.
There's no need to strive for levels of supreme professionalism and subtlety in Comix, especially not when writing about the pals of a girl superspy seemingly based on Kim Possible :P
Do you realize that Kim Possible's appeal in the first place came from that TV series' irreverent attitude genre conventions of action-adventure cartoons? It might have used some clichés but it nearly always found a way to make fun of them in the process.
The fact that it made fun of them doesn't mean I'm going to take the show any more seriously or treat it as any better a level of writing than most other cartoons, nor does that mean I would consider Exner to be any more of a subtle and professionally-written character. And you know what? That's fine by me. I like Exner. I like cheesy fun. You ask Ford, I am the biggest cheese-glutton ever. I take guilty pleasures and openly flaunt my love of them.
As for Miss Exner, I'm planning to take her in different directions than her immediate source of inspiration. For example: The first of my currently planned stories about her is going to be more of a deadpan neo-beatnik roadtrip comedy with few explicitly fantastic elements, think Jim Jarmusch doing H. P. Lovecraft - only the faintest hints that this isn't taking place in a world just like ours. Others are going to revolve around Nazi Occultism (taken more seriously this time than my old playing of the Theozoologist as a comedical figure, this time he's going to be dangerous) and philosophical cyberpunk space opera that's gonna play like Knight Rider by way of Philip K. Dick at his most whacked-out if I'm gonna use comparisons.
I was immediately turned off by this paragraph the moment you mentioned Lovecraft. If you want to subvert cliches, you don't mention Lovecraft, because it enforces a specific genre mindset. As for the direction you intend to take Exner, I'll judge it once you've written it, since if you don't like her you have every right to re-write her. And as for playing straight up cliches, the dangerous evil Nazi Occultist is just about as straight as you can play a cliche Per. And guess what? I love that. Comedic Nazi Occultism was silly, it was a subversion that I didn't care for, didn't enjoy at all because it made no sense. You suddenly decide to play it as a straight cliche and I like him better already.
As for the accusation of it being crass and gratuitous, yeah, perhaps it is. But these are high school kids. Everything about them is going to be crass and gratuitous, given how teenagers tend to be a lot more free with their opinions and actions these days.
Point taken, just reflecting back on my high school years I understand where you're coming from.
Indeed. You only need to read my current MSN name to see what I think of teenage subtlety and the like ;)
As for women in OmniverseOne? Eh, there are some but no, not many. That's symptomatic of a lot more than just OmniverseOne though, it's a whole culture of sci-fi writing and the like. Now, our verses can be anything we want, sure, but we mainly draw our members out of sites like SDN, and previously the site had been sci-fi verses only, and before that was derived from what was essentially Starcraft fanfiction. Yeah, videogame fiction.
Thanks for playing, but I have in the past made some actual effort to recruit new Omniverse contributors from other forums than SDN which were mostly unsuccessful. That said, maybe I should resume doing so. Also, if it's symptomatic of the whole sci-fi culture then that's more reason we need a sea change: One of the reasons I've progressively lost more and more interest in science-fiction, both the literary genre and associated fan subculture, is how hermetic and insular it is. This is something I blame on its self-styled image of intellectualism, which is largely unearned if Sturgeon's Law ("90% of everything is crap") is to be taken as reliable. Nonetheless the view that many sci-fi fans and writers have of the genre being inherently more intellectual than others seems to have become widespread enough to foster a reluctance to look to new horizons (hah!) outside the genre. It also results in lazy elitism, though it's frustrating that sci-fi is often dismissed as "not real literature" the way many people associated with the genre turn that mentality upside down and subscribe to it doesn't do wonders either. (compare-contrast the state of horror fiction, which is equally hermetic but in that genre it's a result of anti-intellectual reverse snobbery instead)
Lolwhut? Nothing in the quoted bit indicated that we haven't attempted to recruit before, just that all our biggest success has come from another heavily sci-fi board, so it's clear what sort of feel this board is going to have to it. To say we "need a sea-change" and to say we should toss it all out for something new is ridiculous. If you want to bring in a bigger female base, here's my suggestion. Rename the site Twilight Omniverse, make the design scheme darker with black and reds and the like, and refocus on vampires. If you want women to flock to your board, make it about the vampires and the witches and forbidden love.

Seriously though, I also mentioned nothing about any perceived "intellectualism" that exists as part of the sci-fi culture, simply that it's a fact that sci-fi is by its very nature and evolution a male-oriented genre, and the evolution of this board has started from a ridiculously male-oriented kernel and only spun on from there with the expected growth.
I might sound hypocritical here because chances are high that I've been guilty of that in the past, however I make it clear that I'm also criticizing myself here. Or my younger self, I've become increasingly extroverted after starting at college which has made my artistic tastes much wider while at the same time my standards have gotten higher. From this vantage point the narrowness of my past tastes and views look largely like fanboy myopia, and I'm even less satisfied with my past writings than I've always been by default. :lol: Whatever, since I've also seen these follies and errors in myself and matured past them or at least made an effort to do so (which is probably easier said than done)
This bit's all just you stating about yourself, so yeah, no need for me to comment here.
Sorry Per, but trying to make this place less of a guys' club isn't going to bring the women in, because at the first impressions it'll still seem the same. It'll still look like a sci-fi site, it'll still come across as one, and unless people are going to go out to sources other than SDN and the like to actively promote this place to the female tribe you'll not notice any changes, no matter how many female scientists and weak males you put into your fiction.
At the very least we can make this an unorthodox sci-fi community avoiding the usual vices of the genre in our writing and general attitude, and to be honest we haven't really promoted it enough to people outside the sci-fi "scene" to really corroborate what you say. (again, here I'm criticizing myself too)
I really just... the usual vices of a genre tend to define it just as much as the setting and style. The vices of a genre, the cliches of a genre, these are things that are inherent to a genre and make it what it is. To suggest that O1 should be a more unorthodox community, I just don't see that happening simply because it's a collaborative forum, and you may be surprised to find that some people came to this sci-fi fiction site to write sci-fi fiction, including all the glorious imbalances, nuances and oddities that make mainstream sci-fi so popular as opposed to all the unorthodox sci-fi that never takes off the ground.
You know, OZ Comix! is at least nominally supposed to be a pastiche of superhero comics? Well, the only reason that I think the superhero genre didn't dry up at some point in the eighties is that within the last 30 years you had an influx of (mostly British) writers who injected it with the attitude of subversive 1970s underground comix. You know: the Alan Moores, Frank Millers, Steven Grants, Warren Ellises and Grant Morrisons... of course, most of those I've mentioned increasingly lost interest in superheroes through the 1990s and I reckon the only reason the genre still exists to large extent in an easily recognizable form is the fans' hunger for more of the same.

Imagine if Westerns continued to be the dominant type of Hollywood action movie even after the Italians deconstructed it in the 1960s and you'll have a good analogy of how ridiculous the premacy of superheroes in American comics is, especially the de-evolution of the iconoclastic underground comix attitude into "grim'n'gritty" stock cynicism. Fortunately, that didn't happen and when westerns get made today they're usually highly unconventional... Dead Man, Unforgiven, The Proposition, The Assassination of Jesse James and so on. Guess why? Because it's accepted that it's a played out genre and you have to do something original if you want your Western to be worth bothering with.
It's a moot point, because the people who are going to be better at making up original things already have been doing so. The Seven Serpents, the New Ghosts, these are imaginative and original and exciting, yes. And for those who can't quite write on the same level as Siege or Vic? For those people who are less developed and perhaps lack that creative leap that allows such original ideas? Should we attempt to become unorthodox and original enough that these people feel they can no longer begin to compare to what's being presented? It's a natural thing that the original is embraced, but so is the straight-played writing. I mean, Archwind. He is about the straightest you could possibly play the hero archetype. And yet he's also one of the most popular heroes of Comixverse. Because straight can be fun.
Anyway: What I criticized was just how Shroomy had put more characterization into male characters than female characters, or fetishized female characters to extents that are ridiculous in stories that aren't expressly pornographic while not doing the same to male characters. It's pretty easy to argue that falls into the categories of casual misogyny and just plain bad writing. It's crass and tacky.
He hadn't put any more characterisation into the male characters than the females. They all have paragraphs of roughly equivalent length, and all descriptions are short enough that they're pretty much all straight up cliches in their current state.
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Re: [General]The Return of CHARACTER CONCEPTS

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Several of the issues raised here are I believe the inevitable product of Comix' very nature as an anarchistic, collaborative universe. The universe lacks a higher planning or direction, and whilst this quality allows for the bewildering abundance of different places, characters, events and gimmicks that litter Comix' landscape, it simultaneously also means that everyone is free to do pretty much whatever they like with the setting as long as it doesn't fly in the face of what little consensus there is.

And that's okay by me. It's the very intention of this setting. All of Comix' authors are interested in writing different stories. The things Per want to write (such as a "deadpan neo-beatnik roadtrip comedy with few explicitly fantastic elements") aren't at all similar to the hysterically over-the-top bizarrities Shroom might produce, and Malchus' loving Lovecraft pastiches aren't necessarily compatible with the style I myself tend to favor, i.e. "take concept X, play it seriously, see what its consequences would be for the world".

Whilst the resulting mess of competing influences can at times be annoying because they force one to deal with things one might perhaps rather not deal with, overall I think it's a sign of the strength of the setting that it can incorporate all these different directions and still work out, most of the time, even if it sometimes is a bit clunky. Sure it might not be what any single one of us would've envisaged at the start, but that's kind of the point, isn't it?

Speaking purely for myself for a bit, I do see where Per is coming from: like I said, I don't agree with everything people bring into this setting either. Some of it I consider tasteless, lame, tired or tacky. But that's the thing with a collaborative universe: this is a consensual reality. Sometimes you'll get overruled. And most of the time this doesn't matter, because it's not at all hard to write stories within this setting that simply pretend all the bits you don't like don't exist.
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Re: [General]The Return of CHARACTER CONCEPTS

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Peregrin wrote:I frankly think that whatever skinship-gropey things happening between Louise and Samira would just be rather nonsexual, kinda like how some teenage girls actually like to do that without any sexual connotations. I actually think it should be downplayed, not out of prudishness but frankly I think it's like you're emphasising it in this post more for base fanservice than for anything really related to characterization and if I suggested it (can't remember right now) then guilty as charged. Reading it now it just comes across as crass and gratuitious.

Also, be careful not to make Samira too much of a neo-hippy stereotype. That'd be lazy writing.
Okay. I got it. Nonsexual, gotcha.

Make her into a volunteer vetrinarian. Usually she'll just treat sick rabbits and kittens, but occasionally Animal Services finds a thirty-foot sewer crocodile or a crashlanded Weird Monstrosity and Samira doesn't bat an eyelid and just grabs her stethoscope and animal first aid kit and rushes to treat the hurt and confused mastadon suffering from frostbite after being thawed out of a glacier? :P

Have her don the khaki shorts and go Steve Irwin with a tranquilizer gun, or for more neo-hippie purposes, an Aztec blowdart.

That would be cool, Y/N?
Maybe we could write them as parodies of Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage, respectively? :lol: Or would that be too obvious a route?

Anyway, Perhaps Anton could also be in talks with getting a job as an electrician. For some reason I also want Anton to attempt building a nuclear reactor in his backyard, which a boy scout actually did in the real world. Maybe he could try patenting his Backyard Nuclear Reactor and sell kits to construct those at home over the internet? As for Nick, I have the idea that Nick is not his real name but he's just called that because of his Nikola Tesla fixation.
They can pastiche Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage in their own way - and already do by being heterosexual life partners who make dumb shit that blow up.

Maybe the story can involve Anton and Nick rallying fellow HTX students on a grand and epic attempt at creating nuclear power in their school lab, and shit starts turning into NUKE 'EM HIGH or some asshole supervillain gets involved and the basis of a potentially interesting storyline is had?
I like to think of Philip as myself 2-3 years ago, and Karl as myself now though both would ultimately be idealized versions of either. Actually, maybe Philip could be more of a right-brain counterpart of the character type Jeff Goldblum usually plays? I can imagine him deliberately seeking out knowledge that appears to be useless under the premise that the weirder the information the weirder the situation will be when it finally is required.
Right-brain counterpart?
You know, I'm probably starting to sound like Sarah Connor in T2 here but I find it troubling that out of the three females on Louise's geek squad you turn the first one into a yuri fanservice object and the other two you give less characterization than the male ones... in addition to making it look like they just hang around and don't help with as much as the males.
How about this. One of them, either Katja or Kristina, is active political science major and is basically Lisa Simpson minus the gratuitous tree-hugging and is also smart enough to keep up with Robert and tell (nag, politely) Anton and Nick that their ideas are dumb and she might be able to make nice with Philip. Or not all of these since it might be all too much, or who knows? But the thing is, since she's politically active then she'll basically involve herself into the more societal problems that the stories might encounter - rather than the superheroic stuff Louise might delve in, or the more kooky sci-fi stuff the other members of the Geek Squad might involve themselves in. She'll be the type of person who'll be dragging you into protests regarding the Danish education system - protests you yourself went to Per (:P) - and who'll be investigating into chemical factories and how protesting union worker leaders are disappearing, and suddenly find out that the chemical factories are a XYZ Bad Guy front for creating MUTANT MONSTROSITIES!

Come on, political commentary, wouldn't you like that? (EDIT: She might also be left-leaning enough to take some political conspiracy theories seriously and might sideline by documenting UFO sightings for her own personal amusement? She might be a not-as-whacko Luna Lovegood!)

The other Katja/Kristina could be psychology major, along with a fasionista actress cosplayer. Dunno. She could also be in Louise's volleyball team or something. But the point of her is to be a character with more ideas other than "jump in there and beat someone with a tesla tonfa" with both beauty and brains in the form of acting charms and guile, essentially an undercover character though I don't think Louise will be doing much undercover ops or stakeouts or anything. But whereas the rest of them will be all techy or geeky or booky, this Katja/Kristina will be more of general people-skills in general and will be familar with fancy society. Perhaps her being a psychology major can play into that, you might think she's just some dumb broad actress/model chick but actually there's more into her than that, in that she's actually rather intelligent and she can totally (psycho)analyze you and shit. You know, a "different perspective". (EDIT: Think Monique, but make her very much more clever and able to profile people, or try to with amateur psychology and common sense. She might be very good at interacting and reading people.)

I don't know of what use this can be to Louise, but it adds options. Maybe she was the damsel in distress and after Louise rescues her, decides to put her acting skills to use and becomes a distressed damsel (intentional bait) instead?

^ Does that add more depth and stuff?

The Geek Squad's most basic details was essentially "guys and girls who help Louise and Karl out" and more specifically they also "help make her fancy gear". I wanted to equally distribute that between the seven characters stated in your Louise profile, but wanted to keep it diverse as well. That is why there's a biology expert (Samira), two engineers (Anton and Nick), a weirdo-literature lover (Philip), a computer expert (Robert) and a social activist and an actress and stuff (Katja and Kristina).

They don't all have to be students of HTX. Robert, Anton and Nick would obviously be in the HTX owing to their sheer geekery (though since Robert is well-adjusted, he could also be in a band and actively engages in sports :D). I don't know about Samira, is Biology a course in HTX? Philip, who has no vocation in sciency-stuff, might as well be some dude Karl runs into in the library - perhaps a crazy classmate from elementary school who only went loopier. Katja/Katrina can be someone who Louise just bumped into, perhaps Louise and Karl had to save her when she was all politically-activistly investigating the aforementioned Chemical Factory and ran into a bunch of MUTANT MONSTROSITIES (formerly union workers). Likewise, the other Katja/Katrina could've been a damsel in distress when... I don't know. They could've met somewhere.
Then there's how we seem to have succumbed to the "mother nature, father science" cliché in having none of the women specialize in something technological. I think we need to make a second draft (at least) of what these characters should be like. It's fairly late in the evening, might post my own ideas tomorrow if I find time.
Yes, maybe I was slightly biased in my selection of the characters and yes, it does seem cliche and "standard". But I really wasn't thinking of playing into cliches, I just thought "hey, Louise needs support characters, now how do we give her support characters? I know, why don't we look at the standard layout of characters in fiction and get ideas?"

Perhaps that might be too cliche'd or standard, or does not play into trope subversions, or it might not be deep philosophically and might not postmodernally turn taken-for-granted conventions inside out... but remember, this stuff was essentially made up on the spot in a relatively short conversation.

Also, maybe I was misogynistic in not even being able to differentiate Katja and Kristina, but I simply ran out of ideas in our conversation and I really don't know which names to put on which character attributes. Why? Because both their names begin with K, that's why. If you gave us a "Nate" and a "Norm" along with Nick, I might also be similarly confused.

Anyway, that's my explanation. My previous post was really just a brief summary of bare-bones ideas I had, and the fact that you guys ended up having this discussion over such sparse and brief material I wrote is totally cool.


OTHER COMMENTS:

1.) I like how Orph and Per are getting into the same argument I got with PREGRIN on MSN!

2.) I think that aside from the artistic merits or demerits of cliches, the following or "cleverly" subverting of thereof, the most important thing to take into consideration is in the entertainment derived from whatever medium is being appraised? Of course, that all depends on just how well things are executed...

3.) I agree with Orph in that subverting cliches has now become the new cliche, and that sometimes attempts at being clever in subverting cliches without being cliche'd in their own subversions may end up being contrived and losing sight of the main goal of being entertaining. Guys like Quentin Tarantino doesn't do his shit because he thinks cliches are lame or horrible, he does his shit because he thinks cliches are awesome and his works goddamn honor them.
Peregrin wrote:Do you realize that Kim Possible's appeal in the first place came from that TV series' irreverent attitude genre conventions of action-adventure cartoons? It might have used some clichés but it nearly always found a way to make fun of them in the process.
I think Kim Possible was entertaining not because the creators splitted hairs and went out of their way to subvert cliches and do some obtuse commentary on conventions and stuff, but that its main purpose was not to make fun but to have fun. There's a difference between making fun and having fun.
One of the reasons I've progressively lost more and more interest in science-fiction, both the literary genre and associated fan subculture, is how hermetic and insular it is. This is something I blame on its self-styled image of intellectualism, which is largely unearned if Sturgeon's Law ("90% of everything is crap") is to be taken as reliable.

Orph wrote:Comedic Nazi Occultism was silly, it was a subversion that I didn't care for, didn't enjoy at all because it made no sense. You suddenly decide to play it as a straight cliche and I like him better already.
This is why Last Crusade is fun.
Siege wrote:I myself tend to favor, i.e. "take concept X, play it seriously, see what its consequences would be for the world".
YOU FROD! :o :lol:
Some of it I consider tasteless, lame, tired or tacky.
You're just not happy because I stuck with 'Avenging Aryan' over Ulrich Lebensborn. ;)
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Re: [General]The Return of CHARACTER CONCEPTS

Post by Peregrin »

Vagrant Orpheus wrote:Sorry, but since the 80s or so deconstructing and subverting cliches has become more cliche than just running with it straight up. This is my opinion at the moment, and obviously particularly good subversions or such are fine, but for the most part lots of people tend to avoid cliches simply to avoid cliches. And in turn, this avoidance of them has become so cliche in and of itself that I delight in seeing cliches played straight now, as long as it's all handled well. After all, these cliches became cliches because they worked and people liked them.
Yeah, cliché is a relative thing... though really, I find your analysis a bit reductionist.

It's more like... what happens is less that "avoiding clichés" becomes a cliché unto itself than one set of clichés displace another. It's the same thing that happens, writers who aren't too creative look at something that works and recycle that not necessarily as much thought as the original. The way the original did it, then becomes a cliché because it's imitated over and over but it's often with a loss of nuance kinda like with several generations of photocopying. For example, or compare Dirty Harry with the zillion of urban action movies borrowing its formula and noticing that there's actually some kind of critical distance to Harry who's presented as a rather unpleasant person, there's just as much focus on the police procedural as on the action scenes and so on... things missing in the imitators.

That said, I agree some genre conventions fall so much out of use that they're eventually forgotten. This is why Raiders of the Lost Ark seemed original in 1981 despite being a throwback to 1930s adventure flicks. Of course, it also tweaks the formula a bit in addition to having better stunt work and SFX and overall better writing. You could also be original by taking an old and influential story and building upon the parts that weren't commonly imitated.

As for your conclusion, sure it is a possibility to do like with Indiana Jones and use conventions that haven't been used in a long time but you make it out to be the only good option. It's got a subtext of "everything that can be done has already been done", and to be honest I think that's giving up creatively. And hell, that a genre convention has become popular or has been so in the past isn't a mark in favour of it either if it's based upon faulty premises or neglecting story logic. For example, the "take off your clothes and die" rule in slasher movies which I think we can all agree is rather prudish and as a matter of fact it's often rather odd that a nominally transgressive genre would often carry such conservative messages... yet slashers still use it. And does anyone not either laugh or groan when a fruit cart gets knocked over during a car chase? :?

Could you perhaps come with some examples of genre conventions you wish hadn't been abandoned? Right now it just seems like you don't like stories who don't go in familiar places and find it confusing if it gets too far from the formula but I also have an inkling that's not what you mean.

If you want to subvert cliches, you don't mention Lovecraft, because it enforces a specific genre mindset.
I think it is because I'm combining his ideas with those of Jim Jarmusch, a film director whose sensibilities are very different from Lovecraft's.
And as for playing straight up cliches, the dangerous evil Nazi Occultist is just about as straight as you can play a cliche Per. And guess what? I love that. Comedic Nazi Occultism was silly, it was a subversion that I didn't care for, didn't enjoy at all because it made no sense. You suddenly decide to play it as a straight cliche and I like him better already.
Well, that's because I ultimately thought that when played seriously Theo's more interesting: Thematically, he represents forces running counter to what we think of as enlightenment not out of ignorance or selfishness but from a well-thought out metaphysical cosmology... not to mention that he's coming from a point of view informed by much more experience than normal humans could ever accumulate by very possibly having done a lot to shape those historical tendencies we find so reprehensible, and that is a truly scary antagonist.

Then, on the more obvious front, there's also how it is pretty damn difficult to suspend disbelief that a 10,000-year old immortal who successfully engineered the rise of fascism would be so stupid as the old silly Theo. :P

Hmmm, this could be a reason it'd be useful to distinguish between an archetype and a cliché: An archetype is somewhat loosely defined and hence flexible, a cliché is a more strictly concept that'd be very specific to a narrow cultural/historical context it doesn't work outside. Of course, the exact difference is subjective but I'm hoping that serious!Theo would not come across as a cliché if written with good enough characterization.
Seriously though, I also mentioned nothing about any perceived "intellectualism" that exists as part of the sci-fi culture, simply that it's a fact that sci-fi is by its very nature and evolution a male-oriented genre, and the evolution of this board has started from a ridiculously male-oriented kernel and only spun on from there with the expected growth.
My point is, does it have to be that way? I don't understand what it is about the core idea of science-fiction, rather than the various trappings and associated subcultures it's accumulated over the years, that makes it inaccessible to female readers?

You said something about how in order to draw more female contributors we'd have to retool it into a horror forum, yet horror was a male-oriented genre too until Anne Rice arrived on the scene and got popular. Similar thing with fantasy and Ursula LeGuin.
I really just... the usual vices of a genre tend to define it just as much as the setting and style. The vices of a genre, the cliches of a genre, these are things that are inherent to a genre and make it what it is.
To be honest, I think that's a rather shallow definition of genres and reducing a genre to its stylistic clichés is like reducing a painting to the brushstrokes made rather than what it all represents: It's focusing on the style above the substance.

With the example of science-fiction, the genre's vices would be things like things like having no sense of scale, assuming current political structures to carry over into the future, basing extraterrestrial cultures upon human ones instead of trying to think what a society of intelligent beings different from anything on Earth would actually be like... they're symptoms of lazy writing, well maybe not the fantasy counterpart culture one if it's used as allegory, and would there be any reason to keep them other than nostalgia?

A more general example would be science-fiction's general tendency to priorize big ideas and abstract concepts so highly that things like plot and characterization get neglected in the writing process, which makes for an unengaging read. Why is that a tradition worth holding on to? Could it be that people like science-fiction novels falling into that pitfall (e. g. Brave New World or Foundation) in spite of it rather than because of it?
To suggest that O1 should be a more unorthodox community, I just don't see that happening simply because it's a collaborative forum, and you may be surprised to find that some people came to this sci-fi fiction site to write sci-fi fiction, including all the glorious imbalances, nuances and oddities that make mainstream sci-fi so popular as opposed to all the unorthodox sci-fi that never takes off the ground.
I don't really buy the argument from popularity. I could just as well turn the bucket around and say that the reason the unorthodox sci-fi isn't as popular is that they appeal only to people who are smarter than the great unwashed masses... even that would be a ridiculous argument to advance because the rebooted Battlestar Galactica which went out of its way to avoid sci-fi clichés and be thematically sophisticated was pretty much more popular than the contemporary Star Trek series Star Trek: Enterprise which played things much more safe.
It's a moot point, because the people who are going to be better at making up original things already have been doing so. The Seven Serpents, the New Ghosts, these are imaginative and original and exciting, yes. And for those who can't quite write on the same level as Siege or Vic? For those people who are less developed and perhaps lack that creative leap that allows such original ideas? Should we attempt to become unorthodox and original enough that these people feel they can no longer begin to compare to what's being presented?
Of course they should improve and come up with more ambitious original concepts, Rome wasn't built in one day after all. I don't grasp your "everything really original has already been done" mentality because if that's really the case, then why write new stories at all instead of just reading the ones that already exist?
It's a natural thing that the original is embraced, but so is the straight-played writing. I mean, Archwind. He is about the straightest you could possibly play the hero archetype. And yet he's also one of the most popular heroes of Comixverse. Because straight can be fun.
Well, not with me. I honestly find Archwind one of the least interesting Comixverse characters, he's a total superhero-by-numbers except for the unusual name (again, surface detail) and his background as an alien abductee which rarely figures into the story at hand.

Frankly, that kind of one-dimensional static hero who's a righteous and upstanding good person all the time is just unrealistic. Who the hell is actually like that? All of us have our skeletons in our closet and our shadow sides, personality traits that quite a few would with good reason proclaim something not to be proud of. Hell, that kind of omnipotence isn't even necessarily a motivation to do good because as a matter of fact that makes it relatively difficult to be punished and increasingly difficult to relate to normal people who are more vulnerable to everything because as time goes on you forget more and more of... Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons showed in Watchmen with Doctor Manhattan what would realistically happen to a human empowered with that kind of omnipotence.

A squeaky-clean cardboard good guy like Archwind is as difficult to relate to as Snidely Whiplash. Nobody's a hero or a villain all the time. On occasions we rise or fall to that level.

Maybe that kind of cardboard characters can be fun out of a sense of nostalgia for when we were kids and watched cartoons or read "boys' own adventure" books about the adventures of such characters, but it's unrealistic characterization nonetheless. Find a historical figure who's seen as a hero today and enough information survives about, and you'll be able to dig up some dirt on him or her. Similar with people seen as villains.


Shroomy wrote:Maybe the story can involve Anton and Nick rallying fellow HTX students on a grand and epic attempt at creating nuclear power in their school lab, and shit starts turning into NUKE 'EM HIGH or some asshole supervillain gets involved and the basis of a potentially interesting storyline is had?
Sounds like a cool and funny idea for a story. I suggest that the supervillain getting involved could be that guy you've thrown around a bit. You know, that wannabe supervillain dude who does everything from his backyard mostly as a bit of family-friendly sociopathic fun, and probably has a modified garden shed for a lair. That'd tie very much into the whole thing being a glorified school project, you know happening on the same scale...
How about this. One of them, either Katja or Kristina, is active political science major and is basically Lisa Simpson minus the gratuitous tree-hugging and is also smart enough to keep up with Robert and tell (nag, politely) Anton and Nick that their ideas are dumb and she might be able to make nice with Philip. Or not all of these since it might be all too much, or who knows? But the thing is, since she's politically active then she'll basically involve herself into the more societal problems that the stories might encounter - rather than the superheroic stuff Louise might delve in, or the more kooky sci-fi stuff the other members of the Geek Squad might involve themselves in. She'll be the type of person who'll be dragging you into protests regarding the Danish education system - protests you yourself went to Per (:P) - and who'll be investigating into chemical factories and how protesting union worker leaders are disappearing, and suddenly find out that the chemical factories are a XYZ Bad Guy front for creating MUTANT MONSTROSITIES!
Sounds like a pretty cool idea, especially if the chemical factory executives turn out to be less evil than just cost-cutting... I mean, wasn't cheapness with security systems also what caused Chernobyl?

I also have an idea for Samira getting involved into an environmentalist activist group that turns out to be a militant eco-terrorist group (as in more Ted Kaczynski than Paul Watson) and then she attempts to leave but they then capture her/attempt to kill her and then Louise has to confront a group of eco-terrorists.
2.) I think that aside from the artistic merits or demerits of cliches, the following or "cleverly" subverting of thereof, the most important thing to take into consideration is in the entertainment derived from whatever medium is being appraised? Of course, that all depends on just how well things are executed...
Yeah, genre conventions are means to an end. That's why the original version of Theo was a fairly stupid concept, the stock Nazi Occult Antagonist except played for laughs without much thought into the hows and whys of the character type. On the flipside, again clichés arise when conventions are used straight without much consideration of whether they're appropriate to use in the context of this story.
Guys like Quentin Tarantino doesn't do his shit because he thinks cliches are lame or horrible, he does his shit because he thinks cliches are awesome and his works goddamn honor them.
It's funny that you picked Tarantino because he's usually praised for using some highly unconventional narrative structures in his movies and, guess what, rarely playing genre conventions straight. ;) That's why in Inglourious Basterds you had Nazis who were nice people and Jewish-American GIs who were bloodthirsty psychos.
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Re: [General]The Return of CHARACTER CONCEPTS

Post by Mobius 1 »

I don't really buy the argument from popularity. I could just as well turn the bucket around and say that the reason the unorthodox sci-fi isn't as popular is that they appeal only to people who are smarter than the great unwashed masses... even that would be a ridiculous argument to advance because the rebooted Battlestar Galactica which went out of its way to avoid sci-fi clichés and be thematically sophisticated was pretty much more popular than the contemporary Star Trek series Star Trek: Enterprise which played things much more safe.
Have you been watching the same nBSG I have? The idea that it goes out of its way to avoid cliches is somewhat ridiculous, GRIMDARK does not equal thematic sophistication and avoiding cliches. The great unwashed masses comment just makes the entire thing more surreal - half the reason we write, as a community, is to get the pleasure of receiving comments from others - take a note at the more popular verses. CSW is straight up technothriller fare. My verse, which has the most giftsnaps in the OZ, is as generic a space opera as you can get.

The point is, it's not what you start off with, but what you do with those characters. Archwind does stand relatable because Shroom writes stories where, after he beats up Mogar, he goes to a BBQ with his fellow heroes and flip burgers.
Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons showed in Watchmen with Doctor Manhattan what would realistically happen to a human empowered with that kind of omnipotence.
Wrong. As Shroom has pointed out, Watchmen's so over the top in the character neuroses that the entire 'REAL CHARACTERS GUYS" meme strains credulity. Every single character in Watchmen is fucked up beyond relief. No is realistic in that story at all. Manhatten is a pushover. Ozymandias is a megalomaniac. Dreiburg is a fat nerd who has the tools to live out his childood fantasies and can only GET IT UP when out superheroing.
A squeaky-clean cardboard good guy like Archwind is as difficult to relate to as Snidely Whiplash. Nobody's a hero or a villain all the time. On occasions we rise or fall to that level.
And people can relate to the average Per character? :) ;)
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Re: [General]The Return of CHARACTER CONCEPTS

Post by Heretic »

Well, I would like to chime in, but too lazy to write a elaborate reply to the huge ass conversation, I can only give the opinion that the reason we make those empty or fetishized female characters is that it's because we are male, so we don't really know what is inside a woman's heart and mind, and most newbie sci-fi writers are single, so it's a yearn that makes us horny and write it down, respectively.

A teenage dude speaking his mind. :lol:

Edit: And the reason I read is to escape from this world. To lands of manly men and muscle women beating dinos up for early routines. That's why I love the 20s pulp fiction over grimdark 80 flicks. Some of the stuff are just so preposterously cheesy and cliche and awesome that way, and that's what I like about it. If I want real life characters and such, I go outside and look at real people. I don't want needless aversions and deconstructions. I don't care as long as the whole thing awesome.

Ok, maybe what I should say that everyone in my opinion (including me) is wrong. It really really depends on the reader and writer base. Some people like their real, grizzled drug-addicted anti-heroes fighting villains while killing innocent cops along the way, and some like trenchcoat wearing crazy adventurers beating up Chinese Clone Communist Cops in Cambodia with Cleats. I don't know about you guys, but I'm within the writer and reader base of the latter. I don't care about character development. For all I care, character development is how many ways the hero can beat down the opposition. So yeah, it really depends on what the reader likes.

I do hope I'm reading right. My head feels fuzzy.
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Re: [General]The Return of CHARACTER CONCEPTS

Post by Heretic »

My point is, does it have to be that way? I don't understand what it is about the core idea of science-fiction, rather than the various trappings and associated subcultures it's accumulated over the years, that makes it inaccessible to female readers?
Well, I would like to disagree. Many females are sci-fi fans. It's just that many prefer Han HUNK Solo blasting stormtroopers over the technicalities of how the Bene Geserrits do things. I think what you mean is Hard Sci-fi, because Space Opera is really quite popular with the girls (look at all the Star Wars, Firefly, Stargate, Star Trek, and Starship Trooper *movie* fanfics many female writers make.),So, to answer your question on why, I think it's what makes science fiction and what science fiction you are thinking about. Now, that's just a guess, and there are many hardcore sci-fi female readers that I have not met in real life, as I said earlier it really depends on the reader.

As for why there aren't many female contributors to Sci-Fi, I really don't know.


Edit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_s ... ve_fiction

This gives more info on the issue. Also, Mary Shelley was the first science fiction writer, which focused on the melodrama of the characters, so yeah.
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Re: [General]The Return of CHARACTER CONCEPTS

Post by Vagrant Orpheus »

Too much text, but just a couple of things that I thought were glaringly obvious, but are apparently too under-intellectualised for college-literary-student Peregrin to grasp :D
For example, the "take off your clothes and die" rule in slasher movies which I think we can all agree is rather prudish and as a matter of fact it's often rather odd that a nominally transgressive genre would often carry such conservative messages... yet slashers still use it.
Ah, no, really it's this simple: Slasher flicks have almost always been directed towards young men and teenage boys. And what do these people want? Tits and blood. Nothing prudish or conservative, it's just giving the audience what they want to see.
You said something about how in order to draw more female contributors we'd have to retool it into a horror forum, yet horror was a male-oriented genre too until Anne Rice arrived on the scene and got popular. Similar thing with fantasy and Ursula LeGuin.
Lulz at this. Vampires and werewolves are so not horror anymore. They're supernatural romance. I refer to Twilight and True Blood, not Dracula and Camila. You'll need to learn to take a joke and sarcasm when you debate with the great, unwashed masses Per. Not everyone holds to your lofty standards of pure and unadulterated intellectualism :P
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Re: [General]The Return of CHARACTER CONCEPTS

Post by Peregrin »

Mobius 1 wrote:Have you been watching the same nBSG I have? The idea that it goes out of its way to avoid cliches is somewhat ridiculous, GRIMDARK does not equal thematic sophistication and avoiding cliches.
A space opera not using laser weapons, teleporters or extraterrestrial life and muting sound in space in order to make it more believable doesn't avoid clichés? And a TV series with a complex plot that leaves it up to the viewer who's the good guys and who's the bad guys, indeed whether it's even possible to make such a division, instead of picking a side isn't more thematically complex than say Star Trek or X-Files? :?
The great unwashed masses comment just makes the entire thing more surreal - half the reason we write, as a community, is to get the pleasure of receiving comments from others - take a note at the more popular verses.
I meant that comment as a devil's advocate position that I immediately shot down afterwards because more highbrow series like nBSG and Lost have managed to cross over to a mainstream audience. :P
My verse, which has the most giftsnaps in the OZ, is as generic a space opera as you can get. The point is, it's not what you start off with, but what you do with those characters.
Well, maybe you've used those tropes in a flexible way in your worldbuilding so that they're easy to play around with for other writers... there's been a lot of other generic space opera verses here, and I actually have to admit that if yours attract more writers than theirs then you're likely doing something right they aren't. I dunno, maybe a lot of creativity is unconscious and you can transcend clichés without really thinking about it. Again, it's possible that I should think more about distinguishing between clichés and archetypes.
Wrong. As Shroom has pointed out, Watchmen's so over the top in the character neuroses that the entire 'REAL CHARACTERS GUYS" meme strains credulity. Every single character in Watchmen is fucked up beyond relief. No is realistic in that story at all. Manhatten is a pushover. Ozymandias is a megalomaniac. Dreiburg is a fat nerd who has the tools to live out his childood fantasies and can only GET IT UP when out superheroing.
Guess what, that kind of dysfunctional people exist in real life and until the 1970s and 1980s it was rare to portray superheroes as straying very far from the accepted American norm of a good up-standing citizen... well, most normal and well-functioning people don't become vigilantes either, let alone ones dressing as giant owls or Egyptian gods when they go about their business. ;)
And people can relate to the average Per character? :) ;)
Well, I think it's easier to relate to Louise and Karl who are basically still normal people with limitations than to a physically and ethically near-omnipotent demigod. It's easier for someone like Archwind to triumph - physically or ethically - than for someone like Miss Exner, so there's potentially more invested in the conflict.

Maybe not someone like Skrymir or Infrared, but those two are still more vulnerable and likely to make mistakes than Archwind... you know, like actual people are! Hell, whether Infrared's even heroic or villainous is going to depend largely on the story. She's someone who appears at first glance to be pretty much a sociopath but can actually care about other people and act ethically even if she's too cynical to do that very often. Maybe that's not a terribly original concept, but still more nuanced and closer to what actual people are like than Archwind.


Heretic wrote:Well, I would like to disagree. Many females are sci-fi fans. It's just that many prefer Han HUNK Solo blasting stormtroopers over the technicalities of how the Bene Geserrits do things. I think what you mean is Hard Sci-fi, because Space Opera is really quite popular with the girls (look at all the Star Wars, Firefly, Stargate, Star Trek, and Starship Trooper *movie* fanfics many female writers make.)
Then we actually agree, I was also questioning Orpheus' claim that sci-fi was an inherently male-oriented genre and you've shown that isn't even so right now. Also, from the looks of the internet Doctor Who and Battlestar Galactica have a higher proportion of female-to-male fans in than those series you mentioned which further shoots down the idea that sci-fi is inherently masculine. Same thing with a lot of sci-fi anime.
And the reason I read is to escape from this world. To lands of manly men and muscle women beating dinos up for early routines. That's why I love the 20s pulp fiction over grimdark 80 flicks. Some of the stuff are just so preposterously cheesy and cliche and awesome that way, and that's what I like about it. If I want real life characters and such, I go outside and look at real people. I don't want needless aversions and deconstructions. I don't care as long as the whole thing awesome.
On the other hand, escapism has to be believable in order to be really good. The escape needs to be convincing in order to work. This mean that no matter how far-fetched the imaginary world is, it still has to follow some kind of internal logic unless it's surrealistic horror where the illogic is part of the point. This means that the characters have to act and develop in a way similar to what real people could in such a situation. Ever wonder why Indiana Jones is more popular than Doc Savage even though both characters belong to the "scholar who's also an action hero" archetype? That's right, it's easier to believe that someone like Indiana Jones would actually exist than someone like Doc Savage would actually exist.

Likewise, I would say that the absolutely best escapism is that which transcends not just the real world but also other escapism. Unexplored territory is always more exciting because you don't know what is ahead, and escaping to the same places over and over again eventually becomes tedious. If it becomes too familiar, it no longer feels like an escape. Of course, this isn't as black and white as I might make it look... let's go back to Indiana Jones. While he's a throwback to 1930s action-adventure movies, his exploits generally avoid or subvert their worst clichés. Notice the scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark where it's like a sword duel is about to start and Indy just shoots the guy with the sword instead of engaging in a knife fight, or the scene where the Gestapo officer draws an ominous-looking device we think is a torture instrument and then it turns out to be a coathanger. :mrgreen:
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Re: [General]The Return of CHARACTER CONCEPTS

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

God-fucking-damn all of you people for turning my initial post with bare-bones details of concept characters into a multi-party debate on sci-fi conventions and stuff... just when I had a working idea for the goddamn War on Orphans story worked out too! :P

Except you, Heretic. I think you're adorable. Chinese Clone Cops in Cambodia with Cleats. :mrgreen:
PREGRIN wrote:Well, not with me. I honestly find Archwind one of the least interesting Comixverse characters, he's a total superhero-by-numbers except for the unusual name (again, surface detail) and his background as an alien abductee which rarely figures into the story at hand.
He was never abducted by aliens, his backstory also directly relates to Mogar's background info too in that Patrick Peck was direct effected by a god-killing celestial weapon used by Mogar eons ago.
Frankly, that kind of one-dimensional static hero who's a righteous and upstanding good person all the time is just unrealistic. Who the hell is actually like that? All of us have our skeletons in our closet and our shadow sides, personality traits that quite a few would with good reason proclaim something not to be proud of. Hell, that kind of omnipotence isn't even necessarily a motivation to do good because as a matter of fact that makes it relatively difficult to be punished and increasingly difficult to relate to normal people who are more vulnerable to everything because as time goes on you forget more and more of... Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons showed in Watchmen with Doctor Manhattan what would realistically happen to a human empowered with that kind of omnipotence.

A squeaky-clean cardboard good guy like Archwind is as difficult to relate to as Snidely Whiplash. Nobody's a hero or a villain all the time. On occasions we rise or fall to that level.

Maybe that kind of cardboard characters can be fun out of a sense of nostalgia for when we were kids and watched cartoons or read "boys' own adventure" books about the adventures of such characters, but it's unrealistic characterization nonetheless. Find a historical figure who's seen as a hero today and enough information survives about, and you'll be able to dig up some dirt on him or her. Similar with people seen as villains.
That's why Archwind's powers developed over the course of years and in that time, his cumulative life experience and his metahuman development gradually made him the way he is? As for skeletons in his closet, I think there could've been times where Archwind turned bad people into greasy smears in his fists and those could count as liquified skeletons in his closet. There is the fact that he's partly retired and wearied after decades of servitude.

I have discussed with others, like FROD, the story of Archwind because the original Archwind article is horrendously outdated - no different from your Theo article in that it was written in an entirely different era of Comix where things were much simpler - and I've already some ideas on new directions to take Archwind, new directions that will stay true to his essential spirit.

Why do we (you) equate "sophisticated" or "original" with works that feature characters that are all neurotic? For a person who originally started this discussion with cries of misogyny, you should be the first person to notice that practically everyone in Watchmen is riddled with psychosexual issues in that one of them thinks every woman is a whore, another one shoots pregnant ladies to death, another one is effectively asexual (Ozymandias), another one is an unfaithful glow-in-the-dark partner, and the only single female character in the story has a backstory in which she is essentially a prostitute with a prostitute for a mother and I don't think it would be far fetched to say that Silk Specter I's mother was also a prostitute. :P

So it is more realistic to bestow great powers to monumental assholes and psychos? Why is it not realistic to depict great powers being bestowed to a fundamentally good person? Is it now unoriginal and stupid and lame to be optimistic because 1980s cynicism is all the rage now?

If that is the case, then I guess the world would be better off idolizing serial rapists and killers rather than Ghandi or Franklin D. Roosevelt or Martin Luther King or Nelson Shroomdela. Of course, none of these persons are perfect, but they did nonetheless dedicate vast majority of their life trying to do good in the world rather than monologue in black-and-white panels over WHORESWHORESWHORES-THECITY-WILL-FLOOD-WITH-EXCREMENT-AND-THE-PEOPLE-WILL-CRYOUT-SAVE-US-AND-I'LL-WHISPER-NEIN!

In short, Archwind is a first/second generation Comix characters and like a lot of characters, he too will need considerable revamping. But I find nothing wrong or unoriginal in the portrayal of a fundamentally good and moral person given great powers. But if you prefer fundamentally doubleplus ungood and immoral persons with great powers... then that's a matter of personal preferences. :P

Also, of course, the assumes that there is absolutely no dirt in Archwind and that he never once did anything bad is a very absolutist and blackwhite fallacy. ;)
Sounds like a cool and funny idea for a story. I suggest that the supervillain getting involved could be that guy you've thrown around a bit. You know, that wannabe supervillain dude who does everything from his backyard mostly as a bit of family-friendly sociopathic fun, and probably has a modified garden shed for a lair. That'd tie very much into the whole thing being a glorified school project, you know happening on the same scale...
Hell, Dr. Horrible Jr. might actually do that because he lost to Anton and Nick in the contest to select a glorified school project. REVENGEANCE!
You said something about how in order to draw more female contributors we'd have to retool it into a horror forum, yet horror was a male-oriented genre too until Anne Rice arrived on the scene and got popular. Similar thing with fantasy and Ursula LeGuin.
PREGRIN. Twilight, the movie at least, had the least amount of suspense and the vast majority of its focus was that of some hokey teen angst drama and there was nothing scary in it at all and no attempt at fright at all, but with all the technical production dedicated to making it as fangirl swoony. I am surprise that you can confuse Twilight for horror when it is very obviously a (terrible) teenage romance drama.

But maybe this was the revolutionary new take on the much-maligned horror genre that we've all been waiting for.
MOBUS wrote:Wrong. As Shroom has pointed out, Watchmen's so over the top in the character neuroses that the entire 'REAL CHARACTERS GUYS" meme strains credulity. Every single character in Watchmen is fucked up beyond relief. No is realistic in that story at all. Manhatten is a pushover. Ozymandias is a megalomaniac. Dreiburg is a fat nerd who has the tools to live out his childood fantasies and can only GET IT UP when out superheroing.
Writing sociopathic killers, rapists, impotent internet permavirgin fatties, misogynistic vigilantes, glow-in-the-dark asocial fuckups who's apathetic enough to get millions killed, and a single female prostitute whose mother was a prostitute and whose grandfather was a prostitute is all the rage right now, Moby.

Writing well-adapted people just trying to do the moral thing is unrealistic because there are never ever any well-adapted people trying to do the moral thing in our grimdark monochromatic blackwhite world where horrible monologues by Josh Hartnett as he kills bitches is the state of the real world in which we live in, makes you give it a cry... FUCK AND LET DIE! WHORES-WHORES-WHORES... WHORES-WHORES-WHORES... WHORES-WHORES! What does it matter to ya when you got a whore to do, YOU GOTTA SHOOT HER AND HER UNBORN CHILD WELL!

WHORES-WHORES-WHORES... WHORES-WHORES-WHORES... WHORES-WHORES! When you were young and your heart was a bleeding breast...

Okay, I will stop now.
PREGRIN wrote:A space opera not using laser weapons, teleporters or extraterrestrial life and muting sound in space in order to make it more believable doesn't avoid clichés? And a TV series with a complex plot that leaves it up to the viewer who's the good guys and who's the bad guys, indeed whether it's even possible to make such a division, instead of picking a side isn't more thematically complex than say Star Trek or X-Files?
A space opera with enemy robots, a plucky ragtag fleet, a very big and fat blonde Mary Sue character, obvious attempts at soap-boxing current events and issues, and lots and lots of religio-mythological bullshitification to move its story forward too.

Do you even regularly follow nBSG or are you speaking of something that you don't often (or at all) watch? Also, I think Moby watches nBSG regularly. Maybe. Moby?
Well, maybe you've used those tropes in a flexible way in your worldbuilding so that they're easy to play around with for other writers... there's been a lot of other generic space opera verses here, and I actually have to admit that if yours attract more writers than theirs then you're likely doing something right they aren't. I dunno, maybe a lot of creativity is unconscious and you can transcend clichés without really thinking about it. Again, it's possible that I should think more about distinguishing between clichés and archetypes.
Maybe you should not take other fellow writers for granted and automatically assume that they're all automatically unimaginative drones who by themselves are incapable of doing things flexibly and imaginatively for their own entertainment?

I don't know. That might rub other people the wrong way. Maybe. Perhaps. Quite possibly. Mayhaps.
Guess what, that kind of dysfunctional people exist in real life and until the 1970s and 1980s it was rare to portray superheroes as straying very far from the accepted American norm of a good up-standing citizen... well, most normal and well-functioning people don't become vigilantes either, let alone ones dressing as giant owls or Egyptian gods when they go about their business.
What if I want to make a statement about how morally good people, empowered with great abilities, can make and affect positive change onthe world as a realistic and non-cynical extrapolation of superheroism? What if I do it without dumb green rocks, perpetually bald sociopaths, or marrying Jimmy Olsen to gorillas or having him and Aquaman die in a desert or belittling both Lana Lang and Lois Lane for being morons? What if I do it in a way that attempts to be very comprehensive and very well-integrated and integral with the framework of our fictional world?
MOBUS wrote:And people can relate to the average Per character?
Zing.
PREGRIN wrote:Well, I think it's easier to relate to Louise and Karl who are basically still normal people with limitations than to a physically and ethically near-omnipotent demigod. It's easier for someone like Archwind to triumph - physically or ethically - than for someone like Miss Exner, so there's potentially more invested in the conflict.
Then you better write Louise and Karl as basically still normal limitations. :P

Also, this is why I haven't been able to write Archwind engaging in weekly superhuman battles with supervillains ever since FROD decided to turn our main metas into one-man city-wrecking leviathans. But Archwind reached this level relatively late in his career and one of the central aspects of his character, which was also written in the main profile, is that he only became immensely powerful after years and years of ordeal and he only became an icon for metahumanity worldwide after that ordeal as well. He started off with powers like Golden Age Superman, even unable to fly.

I can't believe I'm agreeing with FROD here, but Archwind has long since "transcended" (oooh) the basic "superhero smash supervillain" archetype. Now it's going to be difficult to write a character who is supposed to tackle big, intangible, societal things and shit... but that's actually something FROD would consider a positive thing, in that it's a challenge for both the character and a writer. Since I'm a shmuck, I actually hate FROD forever (just kidding FROD, I love you) for making weekly battles between Archwind and Man-Law an impossibility and for giving Archwind a role more akin to... the Nelson Mandela of Metahumans or something. Woah.

Oh, right. There are limitations for Archwind. Physical ones and ethical ones for a "nigh-omnipotent" demigod. For example, when Archwind is forced to come to blows with an equal in power, or even one who is below him. How on Earth would he do it without incurring casualties that potentially number in the thousands?

The thing that FROD wanted for Archwind that I now agree with is that he's not just some cheapo Superman knockoff anymore. He's become a pillar and cornerstone in the Comix world, he's the metaphorical Atlas with the whole world on his shoulders. That's gonna be damn hard to write, though. But there it is.
Maybe that's not a terribly original concept, but still more nuanced and closer to what actual people are like than Archwind.
Nuanced? Closer to actual people? Yeah, it may have more pseudophilopsychosophical whatnots with Infra and all... but as far as nuanced and stuff goes, I actually have to think long and hard for the Comix-verse global ramifications of the Archwind character. He is not just Big Blue with Cape and "S" on His Chest Thwarts Lex Luthor.
Ever wonder why Indiana Jones is more popular than Doc Savage even though both characters belong to the "scholar who's also an action hero" archetype? That's right, it's easier to believe that someone like Indiana Jones would actually exist than someone like Doc Savage would actually exist.
Cockily making some smug remark while chucking people into plane engines or shit and spending the entire story going through narrow-escape after narrow-escape and miraculous chase sequence after chase sequence while bedding the girls who always start off hating him, while cracking his whip and stuff?

Um, maybe you're discounting the fact that Indiana Jones was portrayed by Harrison Ford - who happens to be an iconic character - while Doc Savage was just a comic book character? Oh yeah, I also said in our conversations that cliches/tropes/conversations also depended very much on how the individual performer does it and that each take is different precisely because it's a work created by an individual or groups of individuals.
Notice the scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark where it's like a sword duel is about to start and Indy just shoots the guy with the sword instead of engaging in a knife fight, or the scene where the Gestapo officer draws an ominous-looking device we think is a torture instrument and then it turns out to be a coathanger.
Oh. Now I get it. Those scenes were written because they are meant to be funny and because Harrison Ford had the shits and could not clench his sphincter long enough to act in an elaborate swordfight scene... but because those scenes are meant to be funny.

Geeze. By "avoiding" or "subverting" cliches you actually just mean "having a sense of humor" and by being "entertaining" and "having fun and a good time" and stuff. Geeze.

I think people naturally do these things because these things are obviously fun and because humor is a renewable resource. I don't think Spielberg and Lucas actually thought really hard about subverting genres and creating groundbreaking works and I think their biggest goal was just to "have the funnest and wildest damn time" ever. Dunno, that just seems obvious because I honestly can see where guys like Spielberg and Lucas are coming from when they want wild good jolly awesome fun and when they want to entertain people.
I dunno, maybe a lot of creativity is unconscious and you can transcend clichés without really thinking about it.
Um, it's because each writer/movie maker/actor/artist/whatever is an individual person and naturally adds individual touches to any particular work (that uses any particular cliche) that's being worked on? If a maker makes a very derived and unoriginal and shit effort, then it's probably because that maker really doesn't have much "soul" in him or individualisticness or is really dull. Because, um, I personally like to add individual touches to all sorts of things and my works are heavily shaped by my personality and I think this applies to almost everyone?

I mean, geeze, this is a natural aspect of telling fiction. Hell, with facts as well.

People add their own touches to their own works because they've got things like personalities and individual idiosyncracies? who knew lol amirite?

The people who make very deriviative works are either very unimaginative and lacking in personality and can't conceive much aside from just a couple of paragraphs of text (cough) or are probably very confused or something, or at an early developmental stage and have not really figured things out within themselves... or all of the above.
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Re: [General]The Return of CHARACTER CONCEPTS

Post by Siege »

I'd just like to comment on the "Archwind is difficult to relate to because he's such a do-gooder" bit, because I take serious issue with that. Some of the most popular superheroes of all time are also the most altruistic: Spider-Man and Superman come to mind, for example. It's just plain wrong to say it's difficult to relate to such characters. The majority of people I imagine would love for the world to be composed of people like that, or hell, to be such a stand-up person -- doing right for right's sake, being simply decent without any ulterior motives.

What you might be trying to argue is that it's difficult to write such characters because they appear one-dimensional, but that argument falls flat too, when you think about it. There's plenty room for emotional torment and character conflict, if you write the story right. I think it was Ford who said that you get good stories when you take someone like Archwind, and put them face to face with a problem they can't solve by beating it up.

It's easy to write a compelling story about a stand-up hero like Archwind, who has to operate within an imperfect world. One of the better untapped ideas I've seen on this forum so far is Archwind in the Reagan era, where the administration would attempt to use him as a weapon against the Soviets. Archwind of course refuses - and bang, there's an instant infinity of story potential right there.

Because, how does Archwind balance the interests of his country and the grim realities of the Cold War against his own personal ideals of getting-along? What if his counterparts in the USSR choose differently? What if some of his best superhero friends do pick the president's side? How does a falling-out with Von Reagan affect his status as a national symbol? And how does it affect Von Reagan's position?

Seriously, anyone who feels an utterly altruistic hero is 'difficult to relate to' isn't thinking about this the right way.
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Re: [General]The Return of CHARACTER CONCEPTS

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Yes, agreed the sheer character conflict of such enormous characters - Archwind, representing all that's ideal and noble in superheroism; and Ronald von Reagan, representing the harshness of 'reality' or at least the paradigm of the Cold War. PREGRIN's interpretation of Archwind as falling flat is like how I used to protest FROD's FRODDING where the character would no longer be able to beat people up every week - even though the FRODDING kicks Archwind up a notch and makes him a character with near-global ramifications.

It's like wondering how to compellingly write the President of the USA as a character, or some great king or other leader figure. You can't see how anything might hurt the guy who's so powerful, but actually the guy is also responsible for thousands, millions, of lives and holds them all in his hands.

That might be a bit pretentious or too high-headed and big of me, but it is a general concensus that Archwind has been a foundation of modern superheroism and his career has spanned decades, he's lived through eras, seen so much things ad done so much. His life encompassed almost every aspect of superheroism - from the scrawny Peter Parker being a superpowered second-stringer, to a growing career as his good acts were gradually noticed by a public and a people seeking help in dark times, to a breakthrough moment in his confrontation of Mogar, and everything after that up to current-day Comix.



The thing is, at the start of the Von Reagan administration in 1980, Archwind would've been growing in popularity but his powers would not have been so HUEG. But he grew stronger and "bigger" as the times went by, inversely proportional to Von Reagan in a way. When Archwind would've conflicted with President Reagan, the Big A would not have had such a great position of power and snubbing Von Reagan would not have been the act of an invincible demi-god, but of a great but still mortal and still-grounded man deciding to do the Right and Moral thing.

The times and ordeals of Archwind, as he grows in both strength and person, would be a compelling epic. It's really like distilling Superman and keeping the weirdo nonsense and Superboy Primes and Infinite Crisises out of it all. :P
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Re: [General]The Return of CHARACTER CONCEPTS

Post by Peregrin »

Shroom Man 777 wrote:That's why Archwind's powers developed over the course of years and in that time, his cumulative life experience and his metahuman development gradually made him the way he is? As for skeletons in his closet, I think there could've been times where Archwind turned bad people into greasy smears in his fists and those could count as liquified skeletons in his closet. There is the fact that he's partly retired and wearied after decades of servitude.

I have discussed with others, like FROD, the story of Archwind because the original Archwind article is horrendously outdated - no different from your Theo article in that it was written in an entirely different era of Comix where things were much simpler - and I've already some ideas on new directions to take Archwind, new directions that will stay true to his essential spirit.
Hmm... then the joke's on me for not having followed how the Comixverse has developed in the last couple of years or so. :|
Why do we (you) equate "sophisticated" or "original" with works that feature characters that are all neurotic? For a person who originally started this discussion with cries of misogyny, you should be the first person to notice that practically everyone in Watchmen is riddled with psychosexual issues in that one of them thinks every woman is a whore, another one shoots pregnant ladies to death, another one is effectively asexual (Ozymandias), another one is an unfaithful glow-in-the-dark partner, and the only single female character in the story has a backstory in which she is essentially a prostitute with a prostitute for a mother and I don't think it would be far fetched to say that Silk Specter I's mother was also a prostitute. :P

So it is more realistic to bestow great powers to monumental assholes and psychos? Why is it not realistic to depict great powers being bestowed to a fundamentally good person? Is it now unoriginal and stupid and lame to be optimistic because 1980s cynicism is all the rage now?
There's been a misunderstanding. I didn't mean to say that going all grim'n'gritty like Watchmen was the only way of originality. As a matter of fact I also used Indiana Jones as an example of innovatively playing around with genre conventions, but then again maybe I should have spent more time on Indy viz Watchmen in my comparison. Perhaps I shouldn't have used Watchmen as an example at all, but it's the first superhero deconstruction that crossed my mind and the best known even though that means it's been ripped off to the point of self-parody.

What I meant basically is that a lot of traditional superhero tropes come across as totally fucked-up and creepy when taken to their logical conclusion, and because this is made clear in one of the most popular superhero comics of the last 30 years the only way to write superheroes well is to do something unconventional for the genre with the stories they appear in... but fortunately it looks like you're doing that with Archwind and placing him in a context of realistic power politics that clash against his ideals. :)

And, yes, the characters in Watchmen are fucked-up neurotic wrecks but the story doesn't celebrate that and takes a critical distance towards them. This is different from something like the author's voice having casually misogynistic undertones.
If that is the case, then I guess the world would be better off idolizing serial rapists and killers rather than Ghandi or Franklin D. Roosevelt or Martin Luther King or Nelson Shroomdela. Of course, none of these persons are perfect, but they did nonetheless dedicate vast majority of their life trying to do good in the world rather than monologue in black-and-white panels over WHORESWHORESWHORES-THECITY-WILL-FLOOD-WITH-EXCREMENT-AND-THE-PEOPLE-WILL-CRYOUT-SAVE-US-AND-I'LL-WHISPER-NEIN!
Gandhi said Hitler "wasn't that bad" (source), Franklin Roosevelt referred to Mussolini as "an admirable Italian gentleman" (source) and Martin Luther King plagiarized part of his PhD. I'm not saying that we shouldn't admire these people for what heroic deeds they did, but what I'm saying is that nobody's a hero all the time.

Likewise, nobody's a villain all the time. Stalin might have killed more people than Hitler but still manage to turn the Soviet Union from a backwater into a superpower in 5 years, Hitler rebuilt Germany's economy after the depression, hell Vlad the goddamn Impaler's a national hero in Romania even today because he kept the Ottoman Empire out.

There's heroic actions and villainous actions, heroism and villainy aren't steady states for people. However, you might call a person overwhelmingly heroic or overwhelmingly villainous depending on how he or she mostly acts.
But I find nothing wrong or unoriginal in the portrayal of a fundamentally good and moral person given great powers. But if you prefer fundamentally doubleplus ungood and immoral persons with great powers... then that's a matter of personal preferences. :P

Also, of course, the assumes that there is absolutely no dirt in Archwind and that he never once did anything bad is a very absolutist and blackwhite fallacy. ;)
What I prefer is that even fundamentally good and moral characters should have their "off days" and occasional failure or lapse in moral judgement. And frankly, I don't think someone empowered with such near-omnipotence as Archwind would never ever give in just a little to the temptation of using it for personal gain rather than altruism... in other words, we basically agree and are talking past each other in no small part because I have dropped out of O1 for around a year or so. :|

Sounds like a cool and funny idea for a story. I suggest that the supervillain getting involved could be that guy you've thrown around a bit. You know, that wannabe supervillain dude who does everything from his backyard mostly as a bit of family-friendly sociopathic fun, and probably has a modified garden shed for a lair. That'd tie very much into the whole thing being a glorified school project, you know happening on the same scale...
Hell, Dr. Horrible Jr. might actually do that because he lost to Anton and Nick in the contest to select a glorified school project. REVENGEANCE!
I suggest we should not just go like that, but have Doc Horrible Jr.'s school project have gone horribly wrong (no pun in tended) because that way he'd have some real frustration to take out on Anton and Nick.
PREGRIN. Twilight, the movie at least, had the least amount of suspense and the vast majority of its focus was that of some hokey teen angst drama and there was nothing scary in it at all and no attempt at fright at all, but with all the technical production dedicated to making it as fangirl swoony. I am surprise that you can confuse Twilight for horror when it is very obviously a (terrible) teenage romance drama.
It's generally stocked in the horror section of the bookstore, though. I mean, you don't classify Star Wars as a war movie either even though that's right there in the title...
Writing sociopathic killers, rapists, impotent internet permavirgin fatties, misogynistic vigilantes, glow-in-the-dark asocial fuckups who's apathetic enough to get millions killed, and a single female prostitute whose mother was a prostitute and whose grandfather was a prostitute is all the rage right now, Moby.

Writing well-adapted people just trying to do the moral thing is unrealistic because there are never ever any well-adapted people trying to do the moral thing in our grimdark monochromatic blackwhite world where horrible monologues by Josh Hartnett as he kills bitches is the state of the real world in which we live in, makes you give it a cry...
Not at all. Writing characters who are sociopathic killers all the time or characters who do the right thing all the time is unrealistic. :P

Writing characters who might be dysfunctional psychos but still have admirable traits (you know, like Rorschach), and characters who usually try to do the right thing but don't always succeed or have their moments of dickery (you know, like Indiana Jones)... now that's what should be all the rage. 8-)
A space opera with enemy robots, a plucky ragtag fleet, a very big and fat blonde Mary Sue character, obvious attempts at soap-boxing current events and issues, and lots and lots of religio-mythological bullshitification to move its story forward too.
Enemy robots that aren't particularly more evil than the humans, a plucky ragtag fleet written far more realistically than usual in the genre, and every victory in the story being pretty much pyrrhic despite the protagonist having elements of a Mary Sue... and since when was it wrong for science-fiction to be relevant to current events? ;)
Also, this is why I haven't been able to write Archwind engaging in weekly superhuman battles with supervillains ever since FROD decided to turn our main metas into one-man city-wrecking leviathans. But Archwind reached this level relatively late in his career and one of the central aspects of his character, which was also written in the main profile, is that he only became immensely powerful after years and years of ordeal and he only became an icon for metahumanity worldwide after that ordeal as well. He started off with powers like Golden Age Superman, even unable to fly.

I can't believe I'm agreeing with FROD here, but Archwind has long since "transcended" (oooh) the basic "superhero smash supervillain" archetype. Now it's going to be difficult to write a character who is supposed to tackle big, intangible, societal things and shit... but that's actually something FROD would consider a positive thing, in that it's a challenge for both the character and a writer. Since I'm a shmuck, I actually hate FROD forever (just kidding FROD, I love you) for making weekly battles between Archwind and Man-Law an impossibility and for giving Archwind a role more akin to... the Nelson Mandela of Metahumans or something. Woah.

Oh, right. There are limitations for Archwind. Physical ones and ethical ones for a "nigh-omnipotent" demigod. For example, when Archwind is forced to come to blows with an equal in power, or even one who is below him. How on Earth would he do it without incurring casualties that potentially number in the thousands?

The thing that FROD wanted for Archwind that I now agree with is that he's not just some cheapo Superman knockoff anymore. He's become a pillar and cornerstone in the Comix world, he's the metaphorical Atlas with the whole world on his shoulders. That's gonna be damn hard to write, though. But there it is.
Okay. Again, I'm feeling like an idiot for not having followed the Comixverse well enough and hence not having noticed that Archwind's no longer a cheap Superman knockoff but a more realistic application of the same basic concept and hence a much more interesting character. I've been grasping at straws and shown a lack of faith in my fellow writers.
Cockily making some smug remark while chucking people into plane engines or shit and spending the entire story going through narrow-escape after narrow-escape and miraculous chase sequence after chase sequence while bedding the girls who always start off hating him, while cracking his whip and stuff?

Um, maybe you're discounting the fact that Indiana Jones was portrayed by Harrison Ford - who happens to be an iconic character - while Doc Savage was just a comic book character? Oh yeah, I also said in our conversations that cliches/tropes/conversations also depended very much on how the individual performer does it and that each take is different precisely because it's a work created by an individual or groups of individuals.
What I mean is that Indy doesn't always win, he sometimes loses fights and he has his moments of being kind of a jerk. Compare to Doc Savage, who's pretty much a grade-A Marty Stu.
Oh. Now I get it. Those scenes were written because they are meant to be funny and because Harrison Ford had the shits and could not clench his sphincter long enough to act in an elaborate swordfight scene... but because those scenes are meant to be funny.

Geeze. By "avoiding" or "subverting" cliches you actually just mean "having a sense of humor" and by being "entertaining" and "having fun and a good time" and stuff. Geeze.

I think people naturally do these things because these things are obviously fun and because humor is a renewable resource. I don't think Spielberg and Lucas actually thought really hard about subverting genres and creating groundbreaking works and I think their biggest goal was just to "have the funnest and wildest damn time" ever. Dunno, that just seems obvious because I honestly can see where guys like Spielberg and Lucas are coming from when they want wild good jolly awesome fun and when they want to entertain people.
Like I said before, it actually looks like we're talking past each other. The reason I think we should defy genre conventions as a matter of principle is that it's exciting and fun when you're reading a story or watching a movie and the plot goes places you don't expect it to. I'm not saying that fiction shouldn't strive towards entertainment or even have it as its primary purpose, I'm just thinking about what makes a story entertaining so it's kinda silly you say that they made those scenes because they'd be entertaining rather than because they wanted to avoid clichés... no, they avoided clichés because they wanted to entertain.

I also do think Spielberg and Lucas did think about creating something groundbreaking. I mean, Star Wars definitely subverts genre classifications in how it blurs the difference between science-fiction and fantasy while throwing in elements from Westerns. By the way, in both cases were they trying to resurrect genres that were generally seen as obsolete so there's some motivation there to put in some extra effort. :P
Um, it's because each writer/movie maker/actor/artist/whatever is an individual person and naturally adds individual touches to any particular work (that uses any particular cliche) that's being worked on? If a maker makes a very derived and unoriginal and shit effort, then it's probably because that maker really doesn't have much "soul" in him or individualisticness or is really dull. Because, um, I personally like to add individual touches to all sorts of things and my works are heavily shaped by my personality and I think this applies to almost everyone?

I mean, geeze, this is a natural aspect of telling fiction. Hell, with facts as well.

People add their own touches to their own works because they've got things like personalities and individual idiosyncracies? who knew lol amirite?

The people who make very deriviative works are either very unimaginative and lacking in personality and can't conceive much aside from just a couple of paragraphs of text (cough) or are probably very confused or something, or at an early developmental stage and have not really figured things out within themselves... or all of the above.
The problem is that I imagine that even the derivative writers lacking in personality think they're doing something original and adding their own touches, well most of them anyway, but the things they're doing different are so superficial or minor to be pretty much insignificant and if the end result only barely stands out from the crowd if at all. So the question is where to draw the line between gimmickry and actual originality, and we could probably be having this kind of debate forever because on the other hand a story can be more original than it appears at first glance if the author's more subtle about it.

Also, good writers might be afraid of putting too much of their own touch on things out of fear of alienating the audience, or simply not be allowed to do so by their editors though we don't really have that problem. :)

Siege wrote:It's easy to write a compelling story about a stand-up hero like Archwind, who has to operate within an imperfect world. One of the better untapped ideas I've seen on this forum so far is Archwind in the Reagan era, where the administration would attempt to use him as a weapon against the Soviets. Archwind of course refuses - and bang, there's an instant infinity of story potential right there.

Because, how does Archwind balance the interests of his country and the grim realities of the Cold War against his own personal ideals of getting-along? What if his counterparts in the USSR choose differently? What if some of his best superhero friends do pick the president's side? How does a falling-out with Von Reagan affect his status as a national symbol?
I now have this mental image of around the Vietnam War, with the US military trying to conscript superheroes and perhaps the anti-war movement getting really violent when superpowered people get involved on both sides...

That reminds me: How politically active would superheroes be? Would the support of a superhero for one side be a factor in an election, perhaps with newspapers running stories about which superheroes support which candidates, or with political hot button issues in general... could the sheer prestige factor of having a superhero who's a national icon could be able to sway public support? I imagine that the celebrity importance factor with superheroes would be huge.

On the other hand, perhaps the huge implicit threat of force behind a superhero being politically active could be argued to be potentially dangerous to democracy and hence some superheroes might abstain from political matters or even be reluctant to interfere in conflicts that are politically charged... one hell of a can of worms, really.


Goddamn, I think this is the longest post I've ever made that wasn't a chapter of a story.
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Re: [General]The Return of CHARACTER CONCEPTS

Post by Mobius 1 »

It's generally stocked in the horror section of the bookstore, though. I mean, you don't classify Star Wars as a war movie either even though that's right there in the title...
I can't speak for the bookstores of Europe, except that the one you're referring to is wrong. Twilight is firmly in the young adult section, and the only terrifying thing in the novel is the purple prose.
Gandhi said Hitler "wasn't that bad" (source), Franklin Roosevelt referred to Mussolini as "an admirable Italian gentleman" (source) and Martin Luther King plagiarized part of his PhD. I'm not saying that we shouldn't admire these people for what heroic deeds they did, but what I'm saying is that nobody's a hero all the time.
Clearly brief ethical missteps and Biden blunders equate to 80s GRIMDARK, right? Moreover, I'm amused you assume that the OZ's characters aren't filled with 'grey' characters. Characters in TE slowly become Those Who Fight Monsters the longer they stay alive. CSW characters reguarly have to make difficult choices about collateral damage, sometimes not for the best. The Wayward Son, who's about as good as Archwind, basically killed his archenemy. Not to mention the fact that, when trying to help Africa, one would deduce that he does more harm than good - the power of rock can only go so far.
Writing characters who might be dysfunctional psychos but still have admirable traits (you know, like Rorschach), and characters who usually try to do the right thing but don't always succeed or have their moments of dickery (you know, like Indiana Jones)... now that's what should be all the rage.
I find it funny that anyone would find any admirable traits in Rorschach at all.
Enemy robots that aren't particularly more evil than the humans, a plucky ragtag fleet written far more realistically than usual in the genre, and every victory in the story being pretty much pyrrhic despite the protagonist having elements of a Mary Sue... and since when was it wrong for science-fiction to be relevant to current events?
Are you kidding? The Cylons are crazy homicidal religious maniacs all around, it’s only through the fact that the humans are just as psychotic that they’re viewed on an equal playing field. The ragtag fleet is ridiculously broken, and BATTLESTAR LIVEJOURNAL sure as hell doesn’t equate to realism.

As for relevance to current events? It’d be great if the attempts weren’t hamfisted (New Caprica’s suicide bomber subplot) or drowned under GOD DID IT (the finale, Starbuck in season four). The writing in nBSG has its moments, but I’m not kidding myself by admitting it’s terrible for most of the time. You could toss out half the series and come up with something 200% better.
What I mean is that Indy doesn't always win, he sometimes loses fights and he has his moments of being kind of a jerk. Compare to Doc Savage, who's pretty much a grade-A Marty Stu.
No, I’m pretty sure it’s the popularity. The Indiana Jones movies are on the par for Star Wars for being a pop culture phenomenon. Doc Savage is… a 30s comic star who had a failed 1975 movie adaptation that was forgotten at the Box Office. You’re hilariously misguided if you think people know of Doc Savage to make a comparison between him and Indy and, if they do, base their choice on ‘character moments’. I mean, if you’re going to a Indy movie for character studies something’s wrong with you.

Sometimes, people just want to see a Nazi get punched in the face.
Also, good writers might be afraid of putting too much of their own touch on things out of fear of alienating the audience, or simply not be allowed to do so by their editors though we don't really have that problem.
I love this. Clearly great authors are walking subversion machines being held back by their audience and their editors. As opposed to knowing what the audience wants and knowing how to make money.

I’ve always said that entertainment should be the primary focus of a story. I have no problem when I’m made to think, but people who get all snooty at the “unwashed masses” for liking a story that’s pure fun (with BAYSPLOSIONS or what have you), for not liking their daily meal of fiction to be highbrow enough. I have only have one life to live, I want to spend it with a grin on my face.
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Re: [General]The Return of CHARACTER CONCEPTS

Post by Vagrant Orpheus »

Sorry, just want to weigh in here. Anyone who has talked to me knows what I think of Superman. They know I don't particularly like the guy, but anyone who talks to me also knows that I love Superman. I've watched every season of Smallville, Kingdom Come Superman is just brilliant, and JLU Superman is the ultimate leader, bar none. Superman has evolved, and yes, I believe that he is now relatable. The job's been done better by Archwind, but Supes is definitely somewhat more relatable now.

However, I don't really care all that much about Superman being relatable, because that actually denies the core concept of the character as he was portrayed by DC in the Golden and Silver Ages.

Superman is not someone you should relate to. Superman is someone you should aspire to.

I think that's a vital point about his character and about how DC portrayed him and continue to portray him. DC's early characters all presented you with this concept of aspiring to be someone better, someone greater. It was Marvel who introduced flawed and relatable characters. And they were popular, and no doubting that they were enjoyable. They certainly felt more realistic, but is realism necessarily such a great thing?

Superman and his ilk are the people we should want to be, not the people we already are. One of the Golden Age Superman writers once said (and I'm paraphrasing here) "Other characters appeal to those who are happy being who they are. Superman appeals to those who want to be more". I think that is just such a perfect encapsulation of what Superman/Archwind/Big Damn Hero SHOULD be portrayed as.

Per, you earlier accused me of presenting in my statements something that made it seem as if I held the notion that there is nothing original left in fiction, that I've given up hope and accept that what is is what it is. I would say the same for you, except on the much greater level of accepting reality for what it is. You seem perfectly happy to embrace deeply flawed characters because they are "more realistic". If you believe Rorschach is a realistic character and want to see more of the same, then I would say you've given up hope of real life being any better than it currently is. You have given up aspiring for something more, something beautiful and wonderful and amazing. You, my dear boy, come across as someone perfectly willing to sit in the gutter as long as all the fiction is down there with you.

I think it bears repeating.

Superman is not someone you should relate to. Superman is someone you should aspire to.

PS: nBSG was awesome up until the third season. Then it got messy and ridiculous. To call it more realistic or more relatable than other science-fiction is just plain silly. But the music was amazing, so hey.
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Re: [General]The Return of CHARACTER CONCEPTS

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Notice how I now categorically misspell everyone's names? :D
PREGRIN wrote:There's heroic actions and villainous actions, heroism and villainy aren't steady states for people. However, you might call a person overwhelmingly heroic or overwhelmingly villainous depending on how he or she mostly acts.
Woah. Ya think? :P

Of course heroism involves people, human beings who aren't perfect, trying to do greatness in spite of their human flaws.
What I prefer is that even fundamentally good and moral characters should have their "off days" and occasional failure or lapse in moral judgement. And frankly, I don't think someone empowered with such near-omnipotence as Archwind would never ever give in just a little to the temptation of using it for personal gain rather than altruism... in other words, we basically agree and are talking past each other in no small part because I have dropped out of O1 for around a year or so.
Who is to say that he never has? The man has spent decades fighting the never-ending battle, fighting for truth, justice and humanity (NOT the American Way, because that's for WHORES). Of course he would've had low points, even in his current present state of being a "demi-god" but don't you think it would be a compelling story? The tale of how some ordinary young mere mortal, getting powers, tries to do great things but faces great difficulties associated with his great responsibility but in spite of that he rises in the face of these ordeals to actually-factually make the world a better place? In that he didn't just save the world by punching the Space Queen in the ovaries, but also affected positive change in global society as well?

As Orph said, Superman is supposed to be someone people should aspire to be. Archwind's story could likewise be about a man who also aspired to be better and to do better, and instead of nuking Manhattan thirty five minutes ago or giving some chick cancer with his glow-in-the-dark quantum semen, this guy actually did end up better and doing better.

(FROD and I were musing on a storyline where one of his superhuman best friends goes nuts, gains the power of the sun, kills quite a few people Archwind knows and some who he loves, and forcing Archwind to rip his solar heart out while crying manly tears in space)
It's generally stocked in the horror section of the bookstore, though. I mean, you don't classify Star Wars as a war movie either even though that's right there in the title...
yes because genuine artistic critique involves classifying works by where they are stocked in the bookstore. amirite? who knew? lol!

I saw Twilight, the movie, though I didn't read the book. Have you seen or read either movie or book?
characters who usually try to do the right thing but don't always succeed or have their moments of dickery (you know, like Indiana Jones)
Who is to say that this never happens to characters, like Archwind? The only one who seems to think this is so is... ummm... you.

Also, the fact that Archwind's responsibilities involve many, many human lives and that the consequences of his action have incredible ramifications means that his stories won't just be happy-go-lucky namby pamby stereotypical whatsits.
Enemy robots that aren't particularly more evil than the humans, a plucky ragtag fleet written far more realistically than usual in the genre, and every victory in the story being pretty much pyrrhic despite the protagonist having elements of a Mary Sue... and since when was it wrong for science-fiction to be relevant to current events?
I thought you might say "people should be more original and rather than abase themselves by plucking things from the newsreels to make topical episodes, they must transcend such and such and stuff and stuff".

Also, I repeat: Have you actually seen nBSG? Y/N? :P
Okay. Again, I'm feeling like an idiot for not having followed the Comixverse well enough and hence not having noticed that Archwind's no longer a cheap Superman knockoff but a more realistic application of the same basic concept and hence a much more interesting character. I've been grasping at straws and shown a lack of faith in my fellow writers.
Turns out before we make broad sweeping grandiose statements and apply our awesome artistic literary critic skills, we should actually-factually do our homework so we won't end up looking like maroon baboons after everyone ends up pointing holes in our arguments? amirite? who knew? lol!
What I mean is that Indy doesn't always win, he sometimes loses fights and he has his moments of being kind of a jerk. Compare to Doc Savage, who's pretty much a grade-A Marty Stu.
Mmm... I actually don't know much about Doc Savage, and I think most people now haven't really heard much about 1930s whatever dudes from things called "pulps" (lolwhut). While everyone has heard of Indiana Jones. How does that work for genre conventions and whatsits?
I'm not saying that fiction shouldn't strive towards entertainment or even have it as its primary purpose, I'm just thinking about what makes a story entertaining so it's kinda silly you say that they made those scenes because they'd be entertaining rather than because they wanted to avoid clichés... no, they avoided clichés because they wanted to entertain.
And in the very process they created their own new cliches, made old cliches fashionable again, and etcetera? Because they created generally fun stuff, which became cliches because cliches are generally fun stuff that people enjoy seeing? Then more people will use these cliches because they think its fun. Sometimes these cliches will become un-fun when it is overused. And then sometimes people will make new cliches by using these cliches and trying to make them funner.

I don't know.
I also do think Spielberg and Lucas did think about creating something groundbreaking. I mean, Star Wars definitely subverts genre classifications in how it blurs the difference between science-fiction and fantasy while throwing in elements from Westerns.


Did not Spielberg and Lucas' creative process involve Lucas going "Hey, I think Flash Gordon and stuff is cool and I also like Akira Kurowhatsits samurai movie and stuff and hey look science fantasy like Dune and Galactic Empires like Foundations and oooh"? Man, that un-original shmuck, he was even so lazy that he based the design on the Ewoks on his own fuzzy face. :lol:
That reminds me: How politically active would superheroes be?
Definativeguy, back when he was Ultravox, was caught giving Vice-President Spiro Agnew a blowjob and the ensuing scandal ruined both of their careers.
MOBUS wrote:I love this. Clearly great authors are walking subversion machines being held back by their audience and their editors. As opposed to knowing what the audience wants and knowing how to make money.

I’ve always said that entertainment should be the primary focus of a story. I have no problem when I’m made to think, but people who get all snooty at the “unwashed masses” for liking a story that’s pure fun (with BAYSPLOSIONS or what have you), for not liking their daily meal of fiction to be highbrow enough. I have only have one life to live, I want to spend it with a grin on my face.
This.

The primary purpose of things is to entertain people, be it just the creator itself, just the audience, or both creator and audience and have a good time. Depending on the goal, there are many ways of going about this. Turns out there is no single one definitive true path at achieving this because people - both audience and creator - are all individuals and stuff?

I think what PREGRIN is trying to say with "subverting" and being "original" is that we should "add our own twist" to things. But, holy shit, this is blindingly obvious since people who are creative naturally try to add their own twist to things.


I'd also like to use another Indiana Jones-esque example. The Mummy (not the sequels, since your mileage on them might vary). It was a perfectly entertaining, swashbuckling film that used the Indiana Jones formula very effectively. And stuff.
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Re: [General]The Return of CHARACTER CONCEPTS

Post by Peregrin »

Mobius 1 wrote:Clearly brief ethical missteps and Biden blunders equate to 80s GRIMDARK, right? Moreover, I'm amused you assume that the OZ's characters aren't filled with 'grey' characters. Characters in TE slowly become Those Who Fight Monsters the longer they stay alive. CSW characters reguarly have to make difficult choices about collateral damage, sometimes not for the best. The Wayward Son, who's about as good as Archwind, basically killed his archenemy. Not to mention the fact that, when trying to help Africa, one would deduce that he does more harm than good - the power of rock can only go so far.
Okay. What I meant was basically that in real life people act heroically in spite of their vices, and villainously in spite of their virtues... hell, very few people are heroic or villainous as their standard state and mostly are just people. However, it looks like we here understand this and put more effort into characterization and general conceptualization than most mainstream comics writers do.
I find it funny that anyone would find any admirable traits in Rorschach at all.
Well, there's his utter refusal to compromise his ideals and extraordinary courage. Too bad his ideals are totally and utterly fucked up and leads to his accomplishments meaning pretty much nil, though, and this shows us that even though we might have high ideals we hold on to we should still question them since they might lead us down the gutter like in 'Schach's case.
Are you kidding? The Cylons are crazy homicidal religious maniacs all around, it’s only through the fact that the humans are just as psychotic that they’re viewed on an equal playing field.


That's pretty much what I meant. Hell, in real life you can look at WW2 which we might today look upon as the last time we had an unambiguous showdown of good versus evil but the Allies wouldn't have won without the support of the Soviet Union which was run by crazy homicidal political extremist maniacs just like Nazi Germany.
What I mean is that Indy doesn't always win, he sometimes loses fights and he has his moments of being kind of a jerk. Compare to Doc Savage, who's pretty much a grade-A Marty Stu.
No, I’m pretty sure it’s the popularity. The Indiana Jones movies are on the par for Star Wars for being a pop culture phenomenon. Doc Savage is… a 30s comic star who had a failed 1975 movie adaptation that was forgotten at the Box Office. You’re hilariously misguided if you think people know of Doc Savage to make a comparison between him and Indy and, if they do, base their choice on ‘character moments’. I mean, if you’re going to a Indy movie for character studies something’s wrong with you.
And guess why the 1975 Doc Savage movie was forgotten at the box office whereas Raiders of the Lost Ark became a blockbuster? I think that one's protagonist was a Marty Stu and the other a more realistic well-rounded character had quite a bit to do with it, well that and probably some of the best choreographed and shot action scenes ever of course but pretty fireworks can only carry a movie so far. Guess what, that's a case of a throwback to an old genre improving on its inspirations by adding more depth to it in having more realistic heroes and even having a somewhat sympathetic antagonist in René Bellocq in addition to the stock Nazi badguys.

Frankly I find your insistence that I'm not allowed to analyze why I find a movie entertaining beyond "lol there's good guys and bad guys and the good guys win and the sfx look cool" a bit silly.
I love this. Clearly great authors are walking subversion machines being held back by their audience and their editors. As opposed to knowing what the audience wants and knowing how to make money.
Yeah, everybody knows that writers who work for big franchises never leave ship for smaller publishers who allow for more creative freedom. :roll:
I’ve always said that entertainment should be the primary focus of a story. I have no problem when I’m made to think, but people who get all snooty at the “unwashed masses” for liking a story that’s pure fun (with BAYSPLOSIONS or what have you), for not liking their daily meal of fiction to be highbrow enough. I have only have one life to live, I want to spend it with a grin on my face.
You know, I could use the populist argument too in favour of more complex and cerebral entertainment by pointing to the mainstream success of stuff like Lost or Twin Peaks.

I also like the implication that an intelligent and original story can't be "pure fun". Going by how Lost is more popular than the "good old-fashioned" superhero comics you champion here, I could just as well say that the "unwashed masses" disagree with you on that one and aren't so unwashed after all. :P

Shroomy wrote:Did not Spielberg and Lucas' creative process involve Lucas going "Hey, I think Flash Gordon and stuff is cool and I also like Akira Kurowhatsits samurai movie and stuff and hey look science fantasy like Dune and Galactic Empires like Foundations and oooh"?
Yeah, but they also thought about what they found entertaining about Flash Gordon, Dune and old samurai movies and how they could improve on them. They read Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces because they understood that making a sci-fi movie that felt like a space-age mythology required more than just literally meshing the trappings of the sci-fi genre with those of high fantasy, sure they might have used a formula but they did it for reasons more complex than "this would be fun". Why shouldn't we in the writing process go beyond "this is cool and this is also cool so let's write something like it because that'll also be cool" fanboyism in synthesizing and building on our influences too?
The primary purpose of things is to entertain people, be it just the creator itself, just the audience, or both creator and audience and have a good time. Depending on the goal, there are many ways of going about this. Turns out there is no single one definitive true path at achieving this because people - both audience and creator - are all individuals and stuff?
Then why do you act like the only definitive true path is to write mostly out of "this would be cool" gut feeling and stick to genre formulas "because they're fun" without explaining why they're fun, because only people who don't like "fun" would even question them?

Why can't I have a good time because when I think about narrative structures I come to the conclusion that a really fun story is one which is actually adventurous in its writing by defying audience expectations as well as having something beyond some pretty fireworks to offer? That's why my favourite of the classic sci-fi writers is Philip K. Dick, he writes plots that take a myriad twists and turns - when you're reading one of his books you never know exactly what happens next.
I think what PREGRIN is trying to say with "subverting" and being "original" is that we should "add our own twist" to things. But, holy shit, this is blindingly obvious since people who are creative naturally try to add their own twist to things.
Thing is, even by going by your own premises different writers have different ways of trying to add their own twist and as I said it's debatable how big an original twist on the formula really counts as more than a superficial gimmick.


Vagrant Orpheus wrote:However, I don't really care all that much about Superman being relatable, because that actually denies the core concept of the character as he was portrayed by DC in the Golden and Silver Ages.

Superman is not someone you should relate to. Superman is someone you should aspire to.

I think that's a vital point about his character and about how DC portrayed him and continue to portray him. DC's early characters all presented you with this concept of aspiring to be someone better, someone greater. It was Marvel who introduced flawed and relatable characters. And they were popular, and no doubting that they were enjoyable. They certainly felt more realistic, but is realism necessarily such a great thing?
On the other hand, isn't a character as far from what actually exists as Superman hard to aspire to? There's nothing wrong with characters to aspire to, but I prefer it easier to aspire to a character who has to overcome common human flaws since that shows more in detail how you can become someone better and greater.
Per, you earlier accused me of presenting in my statements something that made it seem as if I held the notion that there is nothing original left in fiction, that I've given up hope and accept that what is is what it is. I would say the same for you, except on the much greater level of accepting reality for what it is. You seem perfectly happy to embrace deeply flawed characters because they are "more realistic". If you believe Rorschach is a realistic character and want to see more of the same, then I would say you've given up hope of real life being any better than it currently is.
No, I believe Rorschach is more realistic than Superman, of course, but Indiana Jones is more realistic than Superman too. He's deeply flawed if not as deeply flawed as Rorschach (how many protagonists are?) but unlike 'Schach it happens to be that Indy overcomes those flaws, and to be honest I think that's a character who shows much better how we can.
You have given up aspiring for something more, something beautiful and wonderful and amazing.
Couldn't be further from the truth. I've given up for aspiring to ideals that are non-realistic and nobody that actually exists could possibly live up to... and guess what? That's what Rorschach does in Watchmen, and when he first meet him he's already become the superhero equivalent of those crazy drunk hobos who rant on about conspiracy theories concerning MacDonalds hamburgers using rat meat instead of beef. :P
"You could not step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you." - Heraclitus
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