#I've seen it happen time and time again and I think the most egregious example I can name is Voltron (almost famously so)

[about-faces]

I'm still loving Gotham Nocturne and I wish it was getting the love/respect/attention is deserves. I've spoken several people who haven't been reading the current Detective Comics run because they're Batmanned Out (good lord, do I get it) and they see it as just another attempt at some kind of "ultimate Batman story with Batman fighting the ultimate evil," which I strongly disagree with.

THAT SAID... as time has gone on, and the story seems to be reaching its finale, there are a few things that stand out of me as problems with this epic storyline.

1.) It's one of the most egregious examples of "writing for the trade paperback." This simply isn't a story that's meant to be read month-to-month. It's too slow, with too little "happening," at least on the superficial level. Paradoxically, it's NOT a story that should be binged! The best comparison that comes to mind is Better Call Saul, since that's the only other example of serialized media that's meticulously slow-paced yet INCREDIBLY RICH for those willing to engage with it on its level rather than expecting it to be Breaking Bad (or in Nocturne's case, a typical Batman story.) Ram V is capable of writing super-engaging monthly issues, as the fantastic Rare Flavours proves, but that brings us to...

2.) The story is sprawling. Maybe even TOO sprawling. When it comes to people who are sick of Batman, I try to sell them on the fact that this story is about GOTHAM AS A WHOLE, right down to the villains who call it home, and how everyone there is as intrinsically a part of Gotham as Batman is. But ensemble stories like that are tricky, and it makes the focus feel all over the place at times, with alternately too much and too little attention being paid to the main players, Batman included. It's a balance that was handled beautifully with Batman: The Audio Adventures, but it seems a bit more awkward here. Again, it's hard to pull off!

Like, we have characters pop up and then vanishing without explanation. We got Azrael back in the AzBats armor for the first time in decades, like, holy shit! That should be a HUGE development! And then, poof, he vanished! There's simply no time to explore Jean-Paul's character because there's so many other things the narrative needs to explore.

This feels like it would have really benefited from a companion series, something to focus on the characters the way the backup stories have done, but just more so. I think about how Peter Tomasi would write companion books to the main big storylines written by Geoff Johns, Grant Morrison, and Scott Snyder, and how he'd focus on character, which always enriched the greater "big important storyline." Which, in turn, also brings me to...

3.) The backup stories have really lost a lot of their punch since they stopped being written by Si Spurrier and were taken over by Dan Watters. Watters is incredibly capable, make no mistake, and his Cheshire/Lian Harper story is one of my favorite parts of this entire saga. But by and large, his tales focus more on the spooky and weird sides of what's happening with Nocturne, whereas Spurrier's stories were more focused on characters navigating the weirdness of the events. As a result, Spurrier gave us what I consider to be some of the very best stories about Jim Gordon, Harvey Dent, and Victor Fries ever written. I really miss those, and how they enriched Ram V's (possibly overly-ambitious) narrative.

Ultimately, Gotham Nocturne feels like the Batman equivalent to an arthouse film, which means it's going to be appreciated by a handful of nerds while leaving most other fans cold, and I can't really blame them. If anything makes me sad about all this, it's how all this incredible character work with Bruce, Harvey, Victor, Talia, and others is going to be ignored. Hell, it already is, given the complete lack of acknowledgement we've seen in other Bat-books for what's going on in Nocturne.

At this point, I just hope it sticks the landing in the finale, because I want to be able to have a complete, satisfying epic to recommend to people who want something a bit richer than the typical "guy in Bat costume punches clown" stories we usually get.

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

answered ask under the cut, but spoilers for (idk a pla fic series that they didn't name and i've never seen), and also me being kind of a bitch. you are warned.

[ Anonymous: That is... really weird that you said that, because that fic series I mentioned *does* have two heroes, as learned by the mc via Vessa, who came after them, but it was still widely known at that point that there had been two. You've said you don't read much pla fic, so I'm pretty sure you've never read the series, which makes that a strange coincidence!

Spoilers for it, since you've said you don't mind those but for anyone who does, but Vessa says that likely the reason for there only being one hero in recent tellings, some 1000 years after the fact, was because the second hero became something of a "villain" afterward. Only she did it to send the other one, who was a faller, home. Arceus had kind of broken the world (on accident, it's implied), and when confronted by the two heroes and the ten soon-to-be nobles, it fixed things and left. But the faller hero had no way back to their own time and place, so the other hero purposefully broke things again. Not as bad as before, but it was still bad. That rift that they opened seems to have caused a bunch of other, much smaller rifts to open and close all over the place, similar to the distortion bubbles but not nearly as dramatic, which people seeking power took advantage of, once they learned they could, seeing as the second hero had done it. Which basically tore things apart and caused everyone to have to flee. Which is why the only things left of it are ruins and the two temples, and the only people are two small settlements with no apparent agriculture. Everyone else died or fled, and people only started coming back to their homeland not like recently-recently, but historically recently. The author goes kind of based on stuff from those Old Verse poems, and the small bits that Vessa gives you, as well as some other things I think, to help with their world building. ]

uh huh yeah the old verses. those things i definitely both know and care about and treat as canon and which are definitely not the most egregious example of me throwing pieces of pla canon into the trash. yep.

i'm ngl this is the main reason i don't like ppl going "oh hey that fic pitch/piece of analysis you just posted was already done somewhere else" cause it's like. well now i can't use this myself without feeling like i'm stealing, or like ppl are gonna assume i'm doing that. especially annoying when it's a bit of analysis/canon extrapolation that i don't even think is hard to come up with in isolation, cause it's not even that other person's Proprietary Idea, that's like original to them, they just happen to be the first/most well known/the one known by the specific person talking to me. like i'm sure this other fic is great and all but like i said in that post, i feel like "two heroes" is just something that's arguably implied, albeit maybe unintentionally, by the existence of more nobles than can fit in a pokemon team, specifically ten, and the ongoing diamond/pearl parallelism.

like i don't think any of my ideas are particularly unique or special, if anything my only distinction is being early to the jump (gestures vaguely at dr analysis), i just would prefer to keep them Mine when i write about them. yanno. it's not like i'm gonna get fined for plagiarism now or anything it's just like, annoying to me. idk the fic sounds fine i guess, i've never read it, and probably will never read it bc it sounds fairly convoluted and like it does too much justification legwork for my tastes, but now i have to have the plot of it hanging over me if i ever write two heroes/ongoing space-time distortion/vessa involvement/etc. the last bit being especially annoying bc i'm literally doing that right now and now it doesn't feel like Mine anymore, because someone else told me about it.

idk i'm just complaining at you i guess, sorry. this just frustrates me is all. i should probably put a disclaimer or warning somewhere but it's not like people read blog descriptions, or even the description of the askbox anymore, since the new blog viewer lets you bypass that now. ugh.

[setaflow]

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[itsclydebitches]

One thing about the whole "family" thing in RWBY that I think about is how we skip over entire semesters between Volumes 1-2 and 2-3. Between those times we are supposed to believe team RWBY become this super close team who have combo attacks and are as close as sisters (and even be in lesbians with one another for some), but all of that bonding is implied to have happened in off-screen or non-canon events (depending on how you view the various comics & books).

It’s far from the first time that RWBY has pushed crucial character development off screen. Granted, Team RWBY's situation overall isn’t nearly as egregious as, say, Oscar disappearing after Jaune attacks him and coming back with a totally new outlook on his situation, but it’s still not great. I think the fandom as a whole is very lenient in regards to the group’s found family-ness because, in true RWBY fashion, we’re encouraged to fill in the blanks with whatever we’d like. Some aspects that stand out to me include:

We’ve been given some pairs that aren’t just partners, but are duos who are pretty much joined at the hip. Yang and Blake seem so close, or Nora and Ren seem so close, that their dynamic presumably just seeps into the team as a whole.

This is particularly the case for duos who, at the time of the material airing, have never interacted in any meaningful way. Some fans pointed out how weird it was for Yang to hug Ren post-Apathy because she doesn’t have a relationship with Ren; the show acts like we should be emotionally invested in their reunion, when in reality we don't yet know anything about how they'd interact. We’re just supposed to assume the closeness is there because they exist on the same team.

The show put a lot of emphasis on partners at the beginning of the show, then dropped it, but fans still read those duos as maintaining that connection despite a severe drop in scenes together. This is most notable with Weiss and Ruby. Yeah, they spent a lot of time together and had a number of bonding moments back at Beacon. But then Weiss went home, Ruby traveled alone, and they’ve hardly had any notable interactions since. (My mind is mostly coming up with Volume 6 stuff like “Ruby carries Weiss off the train in her petal form” or “There’s that moment when they find beans to eat.”). I’ve seen numerous fans insist that they’re just as close as they always were, but the point is we’re no longer seeing it.

The show introduces personal challenges for the group and then never appropriately resolves them. Yang makes no mention of fighting with Ruby when they reunite—she randomly became worried that Blake was mad instead. Ren doesn’t get to work through his intense disagreements over how things are done on this team—he’s randomly told he’s being too closed off and apologizes for that. Weiss’ racism was dropped for four volumes and concluded with a quick apology in Volume 7, long after the show was acting like it no longer mattered. Blake and Yang killed a man together, but don’t get to work through that in any meaningful way. The story is riddled with instances in which the group’s bonds are challenged, but then those conflicts are either dropped or inexplicably turned into something entirely different, something that can be easily fixed. At the same time, the story bypasses so many potential moments of tension (such as disagreeing over Jinn’s vision) that they feel less like a close-knit, diverse team and more like Generic Protagonists moving along for the sake of the plot.

The team is just too big. It’s absolutely possible to write that compelling, found family storytelling with a large cast, but RT is failing to manage all the pieces.

Real quick as a way of demonstrating that, here’s a Criminal Minds scene where the team of seven (just one less than RWBY!) are all bonding and growing closer over a meal.

(For the record, I can't remember if I've used this example before... but I'm using it again! lol)

Some highlights:

Rossi is giving a cooking lesson after being lovingly bullied into it. This gives us some insight into his hobby, his heritage, and even just the house he lives in.

Garcia gets really into the metaphor, a distinct mark of her personality—“So your hands must be brushes.”

“Don’t interrupt”—we continue that teasing and the ‘I’m annoyed but not actually’ response that Rossi is known for.

JJ and Emily both give shocked, little laughs at the exchange. Hotch gives a rare smile. He's the stern, seemingly unapproachable member of the group, so seeing him relax like this is a rare treat for characters and audience alike.

We see them interacting with the cooked spaghetti differently, from grimacing like it might be a worm to heartily taking a bite.

Garcia is still so invested in the lesson she hardly notices the strand she’s still eating.

Hotch unexpectedly demonstrates cooking knowledge by warning them not to burn the onions—“Barvo, Aaron!”—and he gives his smug little, ‘Yup, I know what I’m about’ nod in response, along with a knowing look at JJ. Audience and cast just learned something new about him.

Rossi gives another playful yell as JJ tries to drink her wine. It’s not time yet!

Reid shows up and is a little awkward about it. He wasn’t sure if he’d be joining them after one of his many rough patches. Rossi alleviates any tension by putting on that ‘I’m annoyed’ front again, which helps to normalize the situation.

Emily is all, ‘Wine please??’

Then JJ joins in and Rossi finally allows them to drink. Everyone gleefully toasts while conversation and light laughter starts up as we fade to black.

When Rossi says, “We start at the beginning. You eat what you cook, I’ll supervise, and we’re going to do this all together, just like a family” I believe him! This scene, a mere minute and thirty seconds long, does a fantastic job of clueing us in to everyone’s personalities, their individual interactions, and the ease with which they function as a unit. I think the only one who gets the short straw here is Derek, but he’s wonderfully developed across the rest of the series. Granted, Criminal Minds is a 45 minute, episodic show, which certainly makes it easier to do this kind of character work… but RWBY has its designated moments like the Haven dinner scene. Compare the two and the difference is pretty glaring imo. The group re-tells the plot of conflicts we’ve already seen—we don’t learn anything new about them—and their reactions to these stories are uniformly wild laughter. From the outgoing Ruby to the more reserved Weiss, everything that happens generates a literal laugh-out-loud response from everyone at the table. The only times we get a hint at individuality and unique interactions are a) when Ruby has to clarify for Ren that she means “out of control” in a complimentary way (which, frankly, is a lack of understanding I don’t think Ren ever demonstrates again) and b) when Weiss gives Nora a jump scare with her new summoning ability (which is the exact kind of trick Nora gag that Yang will do in a moment with her arm.) Little of it feels natural or individualized, which doesn’t help to sell the larger idea that they’re the closest team ever whose love for one another overcomes challenges like the Ace Ops and will, presumably, save the world. It’s not horrible writing, just not nearly the same standard of other found-family storytelling. And in an age where large casts with that close-knit dynamic is quite common, RWBY has a lot for viewers to compare it to.

[hamliet]

Hi! i've read some of your writing tips on tragedy and redemption story and find them really helpful in my writing. May i ask for some regarding how to write a bittersweet story? like a tragedy but with a sprinkle of goodness that will be there to soften the blow but also make the tragedy sweeter and more painful? thanks in advance!

Aw thank you! Hmmmm.

Well, I’d say people tend to misinterpret bittersweet, because it was egregiously used to describe GoT’s ending--and while I don’t doubt ASOIAF (if we ever get them) will have a bittersweet ending, GoT’s ending was just straight up grimdark misery. Bittersweet is really about a mix of tragedy and hope. A personal journey may not end with the character alive, but their death is not pointless and their fight and journey mattered.

Think of Titanic: Jack dies, so he and Rose aren’t together in the end; however, his life (and yes, his death, but especially his way of life) gave Rose life. You’re left satisfied even if sad, because his wish for Rose to live for herself came true. Did Jack fall prey to his flaw of hopeless romanticism? Yes, arguably. Does that make it a negative thing? No. 

So I think there are three key elements: fairness to the characters, appreciation for the journey, and hope. I’ll ramble a lot so idk if I’m answering your question but I hope so.

First up, characters and fairness. This itself is twofold: it must be fair in framing and to the characters’ journeys thus far. By framing I mean the standards for all characters have to be the same, or the narrative has to at least be aware of double-standards and call those out. For example, in GoT, this fails because we were asked to hold Daenerys to a different standard than we were asked to hold Sansa or Arya (Daenerys was portrayed as always cold to her victims--when this is demonstrably not the case--while Arya and Sansa engaged in an equally if not more disturbing lack of empathy for their victims). Thus we can’t be happy that one person got a happy ending and another a tragic one, because there’s no sense to be made of it.

However, in AoT, Eren’s arc is pure Shakespearean tragedy, while the overall ending is bittersweet. The reason is that Reiner, Annie, and Eren were all held to account for genocide; Eren was offered redemption time and time and time again, and he refused to take it while Annie and Reiner did atone. Their motives weren’t always pure (whatever that means), but they fought to stop the killing while Eren took every effort to refuse to stop, even wiping his friends’ memories. But while Eren dies, he is still loved by his friends even if what he did does not get a pass. Eren’s choices though were ultimately pointless: his genocide solved nothing, and his friends are trying to untangle his mess.

Fairness, as I implied earlier, doesn’t mean every character gets the same ending. For example, in LOTR, Sam is able to marry Rosie and have many children after the war. But Frodo cannot. He is forever affected by his journey and chooses to go across the sea with the elves. This is true to both their characters’ strengths and flaws, and so the ending is bittersweet because they move on, but it fits for each of them. You have to frame characters as either tragic or not from the beginning. You cannot switch halfway; you can insert red herrings for sure, but the reader has to be able to look back and be like “ah.”

Romeo and Juliet is the most bittersweet of Shakespeare’s tragedies imo, because their love saves the city. It’s a tragedy for the characters personally because they had no need to die and their flaws led them to, but unlike in King Lear or Othello or Hamlet, it’s also a love story at its core, and loves renews and heals. In the other three, which are also awesome and in some ways arguably stronger thematically than R&J, the characters’ flaws swallow everything around them and everything they fought for. There is no justice at the end of Hamlet even if Fortinbras arrives to set the kingdom right; Othello only acts the way everyone cruelly suspected he would; Lear loses absolutely everything and the only happy thing that happens happens off-screen and might not have actually happened in the play and even Edgar taking the throne can’t erase the hell that just happened. He can’t even save Cordelia despite Edmund trying to redeem himself in his dying breath by warning Edgar. Anyways, R&J is in other ways like AoT: main heroes are tragic, but the overall ending is bittersweet.

Penny and Pyrrha’s arcs give RWBY’s a somewhat bittersweet feel, even if I think the overall end of RWBY will be more hopeful (I still suspect we have at least one major death left but not in the main eight/ten). But the point of their deaths isn’t that it was pointless and didn’t have to happen, nor is it that they were always doomed. IT is that they made their choices, and their choices should be honored and because of their choices, they live on even if they are no longer present. Their arcs are tragic but their flaws do not consume everything they stood for (in contrast to say Ironwood, who dies crushed by the city he wanted to save and whose downfall he instigated).

I’ve seen people saying that because their friends are traumatized, it’s negatively framed, but I don’t agree. Penny’s death is going to traumatize her friends because her life mattered. She mattered.  But just because she is dead and chose to die on her terms doesn’t make it a negatively-framed suicide as opposed to a heroic sacrifice. Same with Pyrrha, who was very uncomfortable when asked to be a maiden, followed orders of adults, and in the end chose to fight Cinder as if she was a maiden despite having no powers and knowing she would almost certainly die fighting Cinder. Their loved ones do mourn them, but their sacrifices aren’t pointless, as Penny saves Winter’s life and many of her people’s, and Pyrrha is deeply remembered and honored by her family and village. But beyond what they do for other people, their sacrificial choices matter for their own arcs. Is it unfair they died? Yes. Absolutely. It’s wrong. It’s tragic. But the sweet comfort from it is that they both died knowing their lives had purpose and died in ways that defined who they were as people. Yet it’s also true their deaths were connected to their flaws--Penny’s struggles with self-worth and Pyrrha’s need to be the hero--but it wasn’t like them losing everything to their flaws like Ironwood gave up everything for fear and control, or Eren same deal, or Sauron. Lol.

So uhhh after all those rambles I’d say just know the theme of your story and know your characters and what you want their legacy to be.