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spiders-hth-is-an-outlier · 4 years ago

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Today in Strongly Worded Opinions (That You Didn't Ask For), I'm going to assert that there are too objective ways to measure whether or not a relationship is strong in story terms – by which I mean, unrelated to whether or not readers/viewers personally like the dynamic or the chemistry of the actors (in such cases as there are actors involved).

So for the sake of clarity, be ye advised: this isn't about shipping, fuck it, ship whatever you want idc. Shipping a strong relationship isn't inherently better than shipping a weak one – heck, you could just as easily argue that it's the lazier, less creative route. Also, I don't care? I don't care, it's just fandom. Follow your arrow. This is about ways to discuss whether or not a relationship introduced into a text succeeds or fails as an element of the story – or really as I'm going to prefer calling it, if a given relationship forms a strong or weak story element.

For this I'm presuming that you're creating a relationship between a protagonist and a secondary character introduced as a piece of the protagonist's overall story – protagonist/protagonist relationships aren't really a different situation, but they do have more moving parts, so for simplicity's sake, let's stick with a Main Character (we'll call that M) and a Significant Other (S for short). Also, these relationships by no means have to be romantic; any relationship can be measured as weak or strong in story terms.

Also, I'm going to say everything here as though it were factually true, even though it's just my opinion, which is correct, but if you disagree then it's only my opinion, but I am correct. Ready? Okay!

Strong relationships have story functions; in reality nothing means anything and people just like each other because they do, but fuck reality, it's a huge narrative mess. And my basic premise here is that the story function of a strong relationship falls under one (or more, if you wanna get real fancy) of these three categories:

The relationship can unlock under-explored elements of M's story or character through mirroring or intimacy (often shows up as “friends to lovers”). There is backstory that hasn't been unearthed yet, or some reaction or experience in M's life that could advance the story, and S can serve as a means to get at it. Maybe M and S share a similar trauma or life story; maybe S is the first person M feels able to open up to about something profound and relevant. Maybe part of M's story is a conflict between how they seem to others and how they see themselves or their own potential; maybe S is the person who sees them the way they see themselves...or sees M as the person they're afraid they'll never be. The story goal being met here is giving M a boost toward successful completion of their story arc, so even though there could be conflict, S is fundamentally pulling on the same side as M in the major story conflicts, in such a way that by the end, the reader should feel like M's success is at least in part because of what they gain from their relationship with S.

The relationship can function as a piece of the story's overall conflict, or as a secondary subplot conflict (often shows up as “enemies to lovers”). Traditional romance novel plotting effectively slots the love interest into the role of “antagonist,” because the romance's conflict is generally driven by people not getting what they want from each other until certain win conditions are met. In this kind of relationship, M and S might be actual-facts competitors, or be divided by ideological concerns, or they might be forced into proximity by the plot but clash on some personality level. The arc of this relationship is typically going to be about the M softening up as the relationship develops – if M starts out ruthlessly single-minded, maybe realizing that they're running roughshod over S in the process is part of their character breakthrough; if the story is about M realizing that they've underestimated the complexity of the world around them, maybe coming to recognize S as an equal is how that gets concretized for the reader. Basically this is a story where S presents a problem that M has to solve, and the more central to the narrative solving that problem is, the stronger the relationship is.

The relationship can serve to divide M's goals (often shows up as “love versus duty”). This is a story where M has to accomplish two separate things in order to fulfill their arc, but those two things aren't easily integrated. One of M's goals might be fulfilling a vow, or filial duty, or seeking revenge, and the other goal is some form of protecting or obtaining S. If the story puts M in a position of having to choose, then the relationship is inherently strong; it's providing narrative drive, whether or not S is especially well-developed as an individual character. This one can be tricky, because a very weak relationship can serve a superficially similar purpose, by demonstrating M's devotion to duty or obsessive pursuit of whatever when M rebuffs S to keep them out of harm's way or to avoid distraction or whatever. The difference is that in those superficial cases, the audience is meant to recognize that aw, that's sad, M has really had to Make Sacrifices – but there's really no dramatic tension involved; we know all along that M is going to Make Sacrifices in purusit of the real goal. When this is done seriously with a strong relationship, the audience is meant to feel divided as well; Romeo and Juliet just doesn't work as a story unless the audience likes Juliet and Mercutio, unless they fully identify with the dilemma that Romeo is in when he has to either avenge Mercutio's death or spare Tybalt for Juliet's sake and the sake of their future together. That's a big fucking story moment, and it only works because the audience buys both relationships – Romeo's with Mercutio and with Juliet – as narratively strong, to the point where Romeo's choice is not a forgone conclusion. This one is much easier to get wrong, I think, than the other two are!

What I'm saying here is that a strong relationship isn't really determined by how personally compatible two characters seem to be; a lot of movies that fridge a character's wife, for example, rely on actors convincingly portraying, in a brief window of time, two compatible people who care for each other – I'm thinking of, like, Richard Kimble and his wife in The Fugitive, who I think do sell the idea of a loving and happy marriage, but the relationship itself is a weak one. The story only really needs the bare fact of it – “Kimble had a wife that he loved and then this happened” – to kick off the actual story; the relationship between Kimble and Gerard is a stronger one narratively, because much of the emotional tension of the movie, what makes it more effective than just a series of chase scenes, is the way their mutual respect evolves as they compete against each other, and the story question of “Kimble really needs an ally, is this the right person for him to trust?” It's such a strong relationship that it comes as a huge relief of tension when he does make that gesture of trust and it turns out to be the right choice. The audience is happy that Kimble will be exonerated, but the audience is equally happy that the conflict between these two charcters is over – we didn't like them being at odds because we didn't want either of them to lose! Now, would these two people ever be close friends, let alone come to love each other? No? Yes? Who cares? Kimble loves his wife more, but has a stronger relationship in this story with Gerard. From a writing perspective, it's trivially easy to introduce an S and say “M loves this person,” but it means relatively little. It's harder to introduce an S and say “some part of this story now hinges on how M navigates knowing this person,” but that's kind of what has to happen in order to create a payoff that's worth the effort. A strong relationship provides skeletal structure for the story; it can't be stitched on at the margins.

This is an even tougher sell in something like a television series, where the introduction of S may come in well after the story is underway and the bulk of M's characterization is already in place. That's why introducing a late-season love interest is a notoriously dodgy proposition! To demonstrate weak vs strong relationship in action, I'm going to take an example of what I think was a failed attempt and pitch some ways to doctor it up into a strong relationship: Sam Winchester and Eileen Leahy.

This is objectively a weak relationship. She doesn't materially affect the metaplot of the series, or drive any major choices, or reveal anything about Sam's character. She's just, you know, generally nice and attractive and Sam likes her, which is a fine start, but then the writers just leave her idling in the garage forever. But it didn't have to be that way! Say we wanted to make it a Type 1 relationship: super easy, barely an inconvenience! Eileen is very like Sam, actually, in that she lost her parents as an infant and then had the entire rest of her life shaped by the trauma and the pursuit of revenge. That's amazing. How many other people, even hunters, share that specific experience with Sam Winchester? Sam was physically changed by drinking demon blood in infancy; Eileen was physically changed by being deafened by the banshee or whatever it was in infancy. Even just allowing them to talk about that would have made the relationship stronger. Sam is affected by the fact that there is no Before Time for him; even now that they've long since had their revenge on ol' Yellow Eyes himself, he grapples with the fact that he's forever robbed of any memories of innocence or safety or a life that wasn't lived in the shadow of this killing. Eileen also has had her life's quest for revenge fulfilled, and also has to reckon with the fact that it doesn't actually give her access to the innocence that was stolen from her. Maybe she struggles with that. Maybe Sam can open up to her because she knows what it's like to look back on your child self and feel that however strong you've made yourself, you're never strong enough to protect that child.

What if you want to write something spicier than Sam and Eileen talking about their sad feelings? Okay, let's take a Type 2 story. Eileen has been a lone hunter with a disability all her life; it's fair to guess that even if she can't match Sam's physical strength, the fact that she's survived at all means that she's pretty indomitable. Maybe she's had to be ruthless, even brutal in her hunting style; maybe she has a shoot-first-ask-questions-never approach to hunting that she credits with her very survival, but that Sam finds excessively rash and bloody. Maybe they fight about it. Have her kill some ambiguous, maybe-not-dangerous monstery types, a werewolf or something, and Sam's like, hey, we really can't just-- and Eileen is like, look, I hunt how I hunt, come with me or don't. I mean, this is a retread in some ways of early season conflicts about who to kill and when, but everything in the latter seasons is a retread anyway, so whatever, and it provides something interesting to have Sam deal with this whiplash of how there seem to be two Eileens, the smiley, jocular sweetheart who eats pancakes with him and the one who kills like she's swatting flies. What if he wants one but not the other? It doesn't really work that way, does it? Is this something he can dismiss as a foible, or is this a dealbreaker? The dude is almost forty, if he distances himself from Eileen, how many more hunters does he think he has a chance to meet and marry? If she won't even listen to his concerns seriously, is it really a good relationship anyway, or will Sam's needs always end up taking a backseat to Eileen's?

A Type 3 fix could just come down quite plainly to, what if Eileen is ready to retire? She's had her revenge. She's lived her life on the hunt. Maybe she's done, and maybe she wants Sam to be done with her. Doing this in season 15 would circle Sam back to his season 1 story conflicts in a nice way, I think – why does Sam do this at all, if it's not for revenge any longer? Does he feel personally responsible for every dead person he could've saved but didn't – is that a reasonable boundary, or lack thereof, to set? Is a compromise possible – could he continue to coordinate hunts while also getting out of the field and starting a family, or is that still putting his family in the shadow of too much violence and danger to tolerate? What's Dean going to say? He's pitched a fit in the past when Sam said he wanted out, but he's mellowed with age, hasn't he? Maybe he'll get it now? But maybe Sam also feels guilty and fearful, because he knows Dean will hunt without him, so now he's in more danger because of Sam's choices, if Sam makes this choice. It's a little heteronormative, as story conflicts go, but it's thematically appropriate to Supernatural, and the fact that Eileen isn't speaking out of timidity but out of the same weariness that Sam has so often felt about the whole endless cycle makes it feel a little less “the little lady won't let me go on adventures anymore.” This might not be my pick of the three, but the point is that it makes for a strong conflict, a legitimate divided loyalty for Sam to wrestle with, and one that doesn't have a clear right answer.

Anyway, hopefully that helps illustrate what I mean when I say that the narrative strength of a relationship doesn't have anything to do with how likeable an S character is – Eileen is very likeable! But that doesn't substitute for building her into the fabric of the story in some way. My expectation is that a serious protagonist relationship should bend the story arc in a way that requires response, and if it doesn't, I don't take that relationship particularly seriously. Canon can declare a relationship real by fiat, but it can't automatically declare a relationship meaningful without, you know, making meaning of it.

Oh, and there's not anything really wrong with weak relationships – most M's are going to have several in the story. My point is just that the difference between a weak relationship and a strong one isn't really a matter of taste or preference, but has a functional meaning that can be tested and measured, and if there's argument to be had about it, the argument can take place on evidentiary grounds. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

#apparently i give writing advice now?

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diagraphers-brother · 5 years ago

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Attempts to reconcile information about the planes in Dungeons and Dragons between editions

I am concerned here specifically with D&D settings such as the Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk that have some amount of interaction with the rest of the multiverse - totally self-contained settings like Eberron and Dark Sun don’t raise the kinds of questions I’m talking about.

My impression reading the Dungeons and Dragons rulebooks is that 2E and 5E treat all the settings as being part of a shared multiverse, with overlapping pantheons and shared outer planes; whereas 3E and 5E treat them as entirely seperate settings, with entirely seperate pantheons and outer planes. Overlapping gods aren’t removed from settings in 3E-4E, but they’re treated as reused setting elements rather than a single entity that straddles both. In every edition Corellon Larethian is worshiped by elves in both the Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk, but in 2E and 5E he is a single god whose power extends into both worlds, whereas in 3E and 4E the Forgotten Realms Corellon's Arvandor is part of the Forgotten Realms cosmology while the Greyhawk Corellon’s Arvandor is part of the Greyhawk cosmology and there is no attempt to make these compatible.

This would be all well and good, except that every edition attempts to set itself up as a sequel to the last and explain all the changes with metaplot - 3E is 2E after Vecna attacks Sigil, and 5E’s Forgotten Realms is 5E’s Forgotten Realms is 4E’s Forgotten Realms after the Second Sundering. This would seem to imply that Vecna’s attack on Sigil split the multiverse in to large numbers of non-interacting parts, and that during the Second Sundering they came back together. This is not, in itself, a problem, but how cross-setting gods like Corellon and Moradin fit into it is left unexplained.

On the other hand, 5E’s DMG presents the Great Wheel cosmology used in 2E, the World Tree used by the Forgotten Realms in 3E and 4E’s World Axis as being different theories propounded by different cosmologists within the same setting, which seems to point towards the discrepancies between the editions being a matter of different takes on a single constant cosmology rather than the result of actual changes to the cosmology. You’d think the fact that they can be distinguished by leaving a divine domain and seeing if you’re in an outer plane or the Astral Plane, but spellcasters capable of travelling to other planes are rare enough that it makes sense that it’s hard to get accurate information about them. This, however, would imply that the information on the outer planes in previous editions is near-groundless in-setting speculation rather than a statement of fact, which does not match with how it was presented at the time.

Tracking Which Domains go Where

We are not told explicitly which divine domains go where when the outer planes combine back into the great wheel. However, we are given information with which we can surmise what happens in most ambiguous cases, at least assuming analogous ambiguous cases are handled differently. The Golden Hills are stated in Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes to be in Bytopia, despite the fact that Arvandor, where 4E’s Forgotten Realms puts them, would presumably return to its position in Arboria: This indicates that domains that have merged with other domains after the split return to their original planes rather than following the domains they merged into. Volo’s Guide to Monsters places Nishrek in Acheron despite Gruumsh’s alignment having become Chaotic, so the domains are clearly drawn into the outer planes that match their original locations rather than those that match their deities alignments. And Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount makes it clear that those Dawn War gods who originate in other settings are back where they were in 2E while the gods who originate in 4E still have domains in the Astral Plane.

So, having established which domains went where, what can we conclude about the state of the different planes?

The Straightforwards ones

Some of the planes are fairly straightforwards: Mechanus, the Outlands, Acheron and the Beastlands have never existed in any cosmology other than the Great Wheel, nor had any significant part or inhabitant do so, so we can assume them to have gone through things more-or-less unchanged. The Abyss, Pandemonium and Hell have been presented extremely similarly across editions and settings, and the Abyss and Hell get much more detailed write-ups in the 5E DMG than the other planes, so we don’t need to speculate as to what they’re like.

Planes Missing Major Powers

In other planes, the planes themselves haven’t been mentioned outside Great Wheel material, but gods with great influence in them have been. This is the case in Bytopia (which was dominated by the gnomish gods, who 4E Forgotten Realms place in Arvandor), Elysium (dominated by Pelor before 4E, when he’s in Hestivar - Elysium’s situation is further complicated by the fact that Pelor only seems to have risen to his position there in 3E, when many of the other gods who lived there had already left), Ysgard (dominated by the Aesir until 3E, where Deities and Demigods puts them in a seperate cosmology) and Limbo (where the Spawning Stone that formed the centre of Slaad civilisation spend 4E in the Elemental Chaos)

If we take the 5E DMG “different theories” approach, it may be that nothing has changed in these planes at all, and 4E simply presented an alternative cosmology that did not include these planes and put important parts of them in different places. This approach is feasible for Ysgard and Hades, where the 3E cosmologies place them more-or-less on their own, but the Golden Hills, the Spawning Stone and Pelor have explicit other locations in the World Axis, such that the only way I can see to have the same Golden Hills be in both Arvandor and Bytopia is to pull some sort of space-warping to give the hills two outsides (which, to be fair, is not unfitting for the outer planes), but with the spawning stone we can take a similar approach by proposing that Limbo is a part of the Elemental Chaos.

If we instead approach the changes as changes to the cosmology, there are still two possible approaches with these planes: it is clear that after Vecna’s attack on Sigil, large numbers divine domains split off from their planes, leaving a reduced great wheel attached to Greyspace and containing the gods worshiped there and the demihuman pantheons. However, when a number of Greyhawk gods move to Astral Sea dominions in 4E, it is not clear if the great wheel continues to exist in an even-more-reduced form, still attached to Greyspace, or if they dissolve entirely.

In the former case; we could see political fragmentation as a result of the loss of major power centres; major planar burgs (e.g. Release from Care), major outsider power groups (e.g. Prince Talasid and the Five Companions) or previously-minor gods (e.g. Olidamara) stepping into the gaps left by the more powerful gods or neighbouring planes coming together as they no longer have the resources to manage apart. In any case, once the planes come back together, the planes would face a choice as to whether to stick to the new order or return to the old one. Aspects of how this occurs are likely to differently between the planes - things are likely to be resolved peacefully on good and lawful planes and violently on evil and chaotic ones - but similar uncertainties exist for all of them.

If the planes dissolve entirely, they presumably recoalesce in 5E from the divine dominions that broke off from them and the raw essence of their alignment. In this case, the gods and planars could might revive old customs of interaction or renegotiate new ones from scratch. This possibility raises the question of what happened to inhabitants of the outer planes who weren’t inside dominions - were they annihilated and new ones created when the planes reformed? Split off to other parts of the multiverse we know nothing about? Trapped in isolated demiplanes? placed outside of time so that their consciousness resumed after the second sundering as if no time had passed? Any of these would be entirely compatible with what we know.

Planes Differing Significantly Between Editions

The remaining planes are Celestia, Arborea, Carceri, Gehenna and Hades. Gehenna is straightforwards in and of itself but has complications to do with its relationship to the Yugoloths and Hades. In each of the others, at least a layer is featured in 4E’s World Axis cosmology, and Celestia and Arboria are featured in the Forgotten Realms cosmology as well, but each plane undergoes major changes at some point from the end of second edition to the beginning of fifth:

Arborea

In AD&D, Arborea is dominated by the Olympian and Seladrine pantheons. Come 3E, Olympus and some smaller domains such as Brightwater are split off into their own cosmologies, and Arvandor comes to encompass the entire first layer. In 4E, the parts of Arborea other than Arvandor are not mentioned, but the fact that Arvandor goes from being dominated by forest in 3E to an island-filled ocean in 4E indicates the it may have merged with Aquallor. Mithardir’s fate is unclear, but possibilities include that it broke away from the rest of Arborea to become Shom, was cut off from the rest of the universe and effectively in stasis, was destroyed, went off to some other part of the Astral Plane we haven’t heard of, remained attached to Arvandor and Aquallor and simply wasn’t mentioned in 4E, became an out of the way part of Arvandor or was overtaken by the monsters of Carceri when Corellon opened the connection between the planes and is now abandoned to them and treated as an extension of Carceri.

In 5E, Arvandor is presumably connected to Olympus and the rest of Arboria again, but may still be merged with Aquallor and connected to Carceri.

If we want to equate the 2E-3E and 4E-5E versions of the Eladrins, it may be that part of Arboria also formed into the Feywild.

Mt Celestia

Mt Celestia has three significantly different presentations between the editions (four if you count 3E’s presentation of the layers, but that doesn’t really have consequences that extend to 5E’s tiered mountain version): In the Great Wheel, it is a single mountain ruled by the Hebdomad. In 3E Forgotten Realms this mountain becomes part of the larger plane of the House of the Triad, along with the three surrounding mountains of Martyrdom, Trueheart and the Court. Of these, Martyrdom was originally part of Bytopia, while the other two were part of Mt Celestia. The Hebdomad maintains its authority over Mt Celestia itself, but Tyr becomes overall ruler of the plane.

Come 4E, the House of the Triad is renamed to Celestia, and Torm moves to the city of True Court near the top of the mountain (possibly a renamed Yetsira?) and becomes ruler of the plane.

In the default setting, meanwhile, the seven layers of Celestia become seven seperate mountains. Of these, only Venya, Solania, Mertion and Chronias share names with previous editions’ layers. Venya, previously a gentle, peaceful layer, becomes the domain of the war-god Kord; The lower parts of Chronias’s slopes are explored and settled, while the Bridge of al-Sihal is moved up its slopes to guard the part that is still mysterious (There is also discrepancy here between 4E’s Manual of the Planes and The Plane Above, with the former implying the bridge is near the base of the mountain while the latter places it near the summit); Moradin and Bahamut take over Solania and Mertion from Pistis Sophia and Raziel, and along with Kord replace the Hebdomad as the rulers of Celestia as a whole; and the other mountains all come to be dominated by wilderness and used mainly for the (newly introduced) Game of Mountains.

This makes Celestia the single most complicated plane to merge back into the Great Wheel cosmology. The Forgotten Realms version is relatively simple - Martyrdom is, by analogy to the Golden Hills, presumably back in Bytopia, while the Court and Trueheart could either have returned to their original locations in Mercurial’s and Lunia or simply merged onto the sides of the central mountain to become mountains in Lunia. Default 4E celestia is more difficult - Should the plateaus of Mt Celestia correspond to the original layers of Great Wheel Celestia or the mountains of 4E’s version? In the latter case, what order should they appear in? Will Moradin and Bahamut somehow adapt the Game of Mountains to deal with the fact that the layers no longer have summits to fight over?

Furthermore, in combining the previous versions of Celestia for 5E, we need to figure out how to reconcile the different rulers of previous versions. Will Torm rule Celestia? Moradin and Bahamut? Will Kord continue to rule Venya despite having presumably returned to the Hall of the Valiant in Limbo? Will the gods whose realms have been merged back into Celestia want to place the Hebdomad back in power? Replace Kord in Moradin and Bahamut’s triumvirate? There’s a lot that’s uncertain.

Carceri

In the Great Wheel, Carceri consists of chains of concentric spheres, while the World Axis cosmology makes it a number of moving islands. The World axis version also makes all the islands cold and swampy, where in the Great Wheel only the outermost layer was swamp and only the innermost two are noted to be cold. Finally, Nerull lives in the Great Wheel version of Agathys, while the abominations on 4E’s version would make this suicidal.

5E’s description of the plane indicates that the terrain has gone back to 3E’s version, and the description of the plane as having “layers” implies that the overall form of the plane has done so as well. Whether Agathys contains Necromanteion, the abominations or both with enough space between them to keep Nerull safe (or some other comparable protection for him) is unclear.

Nerull

Speaking of Nerull, he has his own uncertainties around him that straddle Carceri and the Gray Waste: In 3E, as mentioned, Nerull lives in Carceri, but in 4E he is implied to have ruled the Gray Waste for a long time before being killed by the Raven Queen. This implies either that Nerull was resurrected at some point after his death, that there is an extremely long time gap the times of 3E and 4E’s default settings or that 3E and 4E’s Nerulls are seperate beings. Of these, the second seems the most suitable explanation, as it Nerull’s resurrection seems to go against the implications of 4E’s description of his death while treating Greyhawk and Dawn War gods as seperate beings goes against the implications of Explorer’s Guide to Wildermount presenting a pantheon almost identical to the Dawn War one but with the gods shared with Greyhawk in the locations of their Greyhawk versions. The question is raised, in this case, of which plane Nerull lives on now that he has (going by 5E’s list of the deities of Greyhawk) been resurrected, and of whether power in Hades is now held by himself, the Oinadaemon-Hel-Hades trifecta who ruled the plane’s layers in prior editions or some other group who have come into power after Nerull’s death.

Yugoloths

The other issue to do with the Gray Waste concerns the Yugoloths. This uncertainty does not relate to its 4E version at all, but to different editions versions of the Great Wheel cosmology. In 1E Hades is the Yugoloths’ home, and in 2E, while they have moved to Gehenna, they are mentioned as originating in the Gray Waste and have a magical connection to the plane as a result of this. In 5E, on the other hand, the Yugoloths are stated to originate in Gehenna and their magical connection is now to it. I see no way to reconcile these accounts. And going with 5E’s version of the Yugoloths, the question is raised of whether Khin-Oin and the Baernaloths, previously located in the Gray Waste due to the Yugoloths’ connection to that plane, are now in Gehenna as well.

So, what do people think about this? Is there anything important I’m missing? Other takes people have on things?

#Dungeons and Dragons #Dungeons and Dragons 5E #Planescape #Forgotten Realms #Dawn War

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selenethewalker · 6 years ago

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Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines 2 Explanations, Opinions and Requests

As someone who read 5th edition and played VTMB1, I have some opinions to share.

Several members of the intelligence community have uncovered some nasty shit going on in the world at the onset of the War on Terror. After a while some anaylsts uncovered the shtick that will change the game of hunting forever. They tore through SchreckNet and saw everything and formed FIRSTLIGHT. Also known as the Second Inquisition. Then they cleansed Vienna and London of Kindred by way of drone strikes and Rainbow 6 Siege-style assaults.

It was so horrifying that the Camarilla decided to return to old-style messaging communication i.e. Fallout 4 dead drops. Yes that means no internet or cellphones. Otherwise CIA or MI6 will find out.

They also decided to only include the elite as members of the Camarilla. It did not sit well with a homie named Theo Bell. He and his Anarch gang decided to fight the sect and even managed to kill Hardestadt (duh spoiler it's in the book read it maynn). It caused a rift that caused the Anarchs to become their own force.

The Elders are disadvantaged to the youngins for the first time, as a mysterious thang known as the Beckoning have called these Elders to go to the Middle East to take part in the Apex Legends tournament as something is calling them. It's a calling force of some sort. The ones that called them. The clan progenitors probably (probably not stated in the book).

The Sabbat are a shadow of their former selves. They consolidated almost every of their size going to the Middle East for something related to the clan progenitors.

Meanwhile in cities worldwide (Western world duh, I don't think vamps will be interested in Southeast Asia lol) neonates are taking charge of stuff left behind by Elders. The modern nights are the era of neonates now (the book literally said it).

Meanwhile thind bloods are moving to the 16th generation. Weak it is. They used to be prejudiced and killed due to some bullcrap prophecies like Gehenna. But now, heh, everyone is busy fending off Kindred rivals or making sure Captain Price and his band of operators are not following their asses for them to even care about the thin bloods.

Takeaways and theories for Bloodlines 2 (as to stress the importance of 5th Edition to its story):

•The player char is said to be thin blood. Weak you know, but not only the 5th edition provided ways to ascend to "normal" conditions, it also states that everyone else is busy hiding from Captain Price or fending off rivals (only few elders because Beckoning maynn) to even care about small nuisances. You can probably get away of turning VTMB2 into Metal Gear Solid sometimes with these above facts. In fact being thin blood is probably the safest status due to the newly-inststed cover of irrelevance.

•Of course this also means war. If Captain Price and his band of operators kill powerful vampires better than seasoned veteran hunters, that can put a significant losses of undead population that mass embraces are becoming widespread among everyone that is not the Sabbat. Desperate times lads and lasses. The player char is one of the unlucky ones.

•Said thing also created blood shortage problems. Of course. It's bound to happen in a world filled with few elder vampires to hold the reins. That's that Blood Trade happened. More food for FIRSTLIGHT then. I've played many hardcore games to know how such deals end.

•Variohs factions are said to reimagine playing Apex Legends fighting over blood and territory. This is why being a thin blood is IMO probably advantageous in this situation. As the metaplot states, every Kindred are distracted by rival or the FIRSTLIGHT to even worry about weak Kindred. The thin bloods now are nothing but background noise that no one cared about. IDK how this plays out in the upcoming game though.

•I bet vampire hunters probably have a more important role than before. FIRSTLIGHT changed the game after all. We should expect hunters/special ops equipped with weapons setups more commonly found on battle royale games due to this.

•Elders might not probably not as powerful as before. As metaplot states, they are more careful now, otherwise they are free chicken dinner for a hunter or fall to their undead rivals. IDK how this is represented in the game.

Feel free to add more.

#vtmb2 #vtmb #vtm #vampire the masquerade #vampire the masquerade bloodlines 2 #vampire the masquerade bloodlines #world of darkness #wod #vampire #vampire the masquerade 5th edition #V5

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centaurianthropology · 7 years ago

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The Magnus Archives Season 3 Q&A – What We Learned!

So this isn’t my usual analysis, but I did decide to collate a little bullet-point list of all the things we’ve learned from the Season 3 Q&A for those of you who can’t/don’t want to listen for whatever reason, but still want the delicious information that we got. I’ll also be including my own thoughts about some of the points, so there will be some tasty meta. This will just be a bit more of an informational post than most are.

· The metaplot is known through season 5 (which will be the final season), and is hashed out in more detail at the beginning of each season. The individual spooky stories are not necessarily known prior to the week before writing. There is usually a general idea, but no specific details until far closer to the deadline.

· Martin’s crush on Jon was known from the beginning of the series. No specifics were given about when and how it came about on Martin’s end. I imagine we’ll probably get more into this as we go forward (I lean toward it developing while he was living in the Archives, as his attitude toward Jon definitely shifted from “I have to prove myself to my boss who doesn’t believe in me” to getting very emotional when he thought he left Jon and Tim to die in the tunnels). But it was known that the crush would or already had happened from the inception of Martin’s character.

· Tim’s background was known 2 seasons prior to now (so end of season 1). It only came about at that point because, prior to that, Tim was going to be the one to be replaced by the Not-Them at the end of season 1 rather than Sasha. There had to be a last-minute change because Lottie (the woman who played Sasha) had a scheduling conflict that meant she couldn’t commit to the continued large-scale time commitment. So Sasha got replaced, Tim got a backstory, and the rest is history. Very interesting to think that the descent into bitterness and potentially even the ties to the circus were originally meant to be Sasha’s. Is that why she was so interested in the calliope in season 1 perhaps? Having the only main female character also be the first to die was also one of the big reasons why they added a lot of major recurring female characters from then on.

· Basira and Daisy becoming as significant as they were was a combination of the characters being interesting and the actors being fun to working with. They also very much fulfilled certain necessary narrative roles.

· They knew Melanie was going to become an assistant from shortly after Lydia’s recording of her initial episode. I’m guessing this is partly to do with Lydia being already available, but I also have to imagine it was due to the instant, nasty rapport she had with Jon. She was certainly the character from season 1 who I most wanted back when I initially heard her.

· Jonny’s original pitch for the show was the 13 fears, though the Slaughter and the Hunt were initially the same, but as he worked through them he realized that the root fear was very different. It became especially apparent due to the fact that extremely different (and likely very poorly cooperating) sorts of people were driven to each of those powers. This is interesting, because it implies that Melanie and Daisy, though we have not seen them interact, would not get on at all. They’re driven by instincts that are too close but too different.

· Poor, poor Jonny is haunted by Elias’ surge in popularity during season 3, particularly the large contingent of fans who found him suddenly and definitely attractive. He blames Ben Meredith for all his woes: “It was only after [episode] 92 when he started to be properly, overtly villainous, and everyone just decided how sexy he was! When we were planning things out, there was no way for us to foresee how sexy Elias was going to be. Something I blame entirely on Ben.” And Alex cackled in the background.

· Melanie’s clap-marker as her statement beginning was actually improvisation on Lydia’s part (and works wonderfully with her background in video production). By and large, though, there was little improvisation from the actors. There was a lot of lean-in to certain qualities that actors brought out if they were particularly good at it.

· Jonny’s favorite power to write is the Flesh because it’s super weird and lets him dig into really odd writing. His least favorite is the Dark because it’s so easy to fall into tropes and clichés, and he doesn’t actually share that particular fear. He also finds writing the Desolation particularly challenging, as it treads the closest to his biggest distaste in horror: linking spooky fictional stuff with real-life trauma. The very nature of the Desolation lends itself to trauma-porn, so when writing it he has to be especially careful not to do that. Alex’s least favorite from a production standpoint is the Spiral because it’s always a nightmare editing it, but the Vast is his favorite, because he adds high amplitude low frequency noise to induce an on-edge feeling in the listener.

· Alex really enjoys killing all the characters you love. Sasha’s replacement might have been his favorite moment in the show, because it was subtle enough a lot of people didn’t catch it. He also seemed positively gleeful when joking about how very dead Tim is. Of all the changes in personality from character to actor, Alex is always the one who gives me the most whiplash. Which, I suppose, is a testament to his acting abilities.

· Perhaps Jonny’s greatest regret is naming the main character after himself and not thinking that would become … complicated. Apparently, in the earliest drafts he was just the host of the anthology series, and not a character in his own right, which is why he originally just went with his own name. Then he didn’t think to change it as they made Jonanthan Sims his own character with only vague similarities to Jonny (he was basically all the bits of Jonny that would make a good horror protagonist, exaggerated for effect, right up until about episode 20, at which point the character began to develop along his own lines and moved farther and farther from Jonny), who would like to believe that his own personal decisions were less “overtly horrific” than his fictional counterpart. Alex described Jonny vs Jon as “I’d like to think that you’re less of a hot garbage-fire of a person”. They both agreed that Jon (the character) was the absolute king of terrible decisions, and that it was hysterical to listen to Jonny’s parents eviscerate Jon’s incredibly awful decisions. I love Jonathan Sims, Head Asshole of the Magnus Institute, but I will agree with their assessment of his character.

· A similar regret was naming the assistants after Jonny’s then-roommates. Not only did it cause confusion (as all 3 have now also been in the show at some point), but he brutally killed off his fiancé’s namesake first. Oops?

· It sounds at least probable we’ll get the last bit of the Daedalus space station story in season 4. On that note, I found it interesting that all recurring story themes, etc, are mentioned to recur in season 4. There was absolutely no mention of season 5 at all. Which makes me leery.

· US distribution and ratings for podcasts are … interesting. Jonny could add in all the violence, explicit gore, and even sex he wanted. The only thing (literally the only thing) that gets a podcast marked *explicit* is swearing. Which meant that the podcast, in order to not be marked as explicit, had to scale back the language and nothing else. Every time a character swears, it has to be well-thought-out, and Jonny has to sell Alex on why it’s important. On the up-side, the lack of swearing was apparently what convinced Sue Sims to be a part of the cast, so I think getting Gertrude is well worth adherence to a laughably odd rule for US ratings. Also, on that same note, Alex’s imitation of Jonny’s mother nearly made me snort tea up my nose. So thanks for that, Alex.

· Jonny believes that what he writes is ‘escapist horror’. It’s a way of indulging in fear and spookiness in a controlled, safe way, when it won’t suddenly turn deeply unpleasant and traumatic. He believes that his audience needs to trust that they can enjoy the horror without worrying that it will unexpectedly cross lines. He separates that from literary horror, which often does dig into very traumatic issues through the mechanisms of horror in very thoughtful ways. All horror, in his opinion, needs to be respectful when it tackles very traumatic subjects. The reason that Jonny personally doesn’t write literary horror is that he has no personal experience with those sorts of traumas, and would not feel qualified to dig into them in a genuine and thoughtful way. He therefore sticks to escapist horror that his audience knows they can enjoy without worrying about it suddenly veering from spooks to trauma.

· The sound of the Anglerfish is a baby crying, slowed down 100x. Nikola had record scratches layered under her voice very subtly.

· Jonny’s favorite thing to record in season 3 was his [MUFFLED FEELINGS], and he revealed that he managed to sound like he had a gag in his mouth by trying to stuff as much of his fist into his mouth as possible before trying to deliver lines. Which produced a really amazing amount of saliva, apparently. They also had a lot of fun trying to record one of the larger group scenes in which most of the participants shouted at one another, because they used up most of the oxygen in the studio and all got very dizzy. Alex really enjoyed recording his scenes in episode 100, because it was one of the few times he got to improvise, and he and the actress spent the entire episode trying to make one another laugh.

· Also, all statements in episode 100 are confirmed to have been supernatural events, simply told badly. The actors got a paragraph telling them what really happened, as well as some bullet points detailing how they might get side-tracked or otherwise be terrible statement givers. The rest was slowly improvised, with frequent checks for canon-compliance. And, yes, episode 100 was absolutely a funny way of answering the question: “Does the magic power also make them really eloquent storytellers?” “YES. YES, IT DOES.”

· Alex misses his old analogue mixer. There was about 2 minutes of eulogizing.

· Tim is 100% dead. They also specify that they will never resurrect characters or bring them back from the dead (which makes Jon’s current situation particularly worrisome, as he’s not quite dead, but he’s inches from it). Dead characters may still make appearances via tape (Gertrude’s been dead the whole time, and it hasn’t stopped her from showing up plenty) or speak from beyond the grave (thanks Gerry), but if a character dies, they will not come back to life. This also means that Michael will not be coming back as the Distortion. The distortion is now Helen, and the story of the Distortion is about what and who she is. Michael may return as audio, of course, but not in the form of the Distortion. Likewise, Gertrude and Leitner in the season finale were not ghosts; they were mostly Nikola, with a little bit of Unknowing reality-bending-weird thrown in.

· Georgie will be returning, but she will be an occasionally recurring character rather than a regular.

· The Usher Foundation is the American sister foundation to the Magnus Institute, which is similar to it but different. It’s a way to broaden the world and give a nice hook for fanfiction/RPG settings/etc. The same can be said of the other institutions like the Chinese research institution. It’s a way to expand the world and to give a sense of scope without a locked-down story. There’s just too much story to fit into two more seasons as is.

· There is a nexus of timeline discrepancies that is 100% part of the plot, but the rest of timeline issues are probably just mistakes. Mary Kaey’s dates are almost definitely oversights in writing, but Jonny doesn’t discount that he might do something with the discrepancy to make it an interesting plot point in the future.

· Gerry’s father is not confirmed to be Eric, the research assistant of Gertrude’s who took the statement in ‘Upon a Stair’, as Jonny refused to answer the question. He did, however, state that whoever asked had been listening very closely.

· Any character who believes they understand how the powers work is absolutely wrong. This does include Gerry’s interpretation of Robert Smirke’s cosmology, though Jonny did state that what Gerry said is about as close as we’re likely to get to the truth of the cosmology (no exposition dump is a lie, but it’s only a decent approximation). However, the powers are going to defy any attempt to nail them down or perfectly sum them up. Plenty of things will not line up with the way Gerry described them, because the powers work on nightmare logic, not normal logic.

· The tapes are NOT neutral. They are not simply objects to record. There is more to them than that, but we don’t know what.

· Jonny is a massive history nerd. He got very into Wolfgang von Kempelin, and his imitation of von Kempelen’s speaking machine was hysterical. His favorite episode to write was ‘Tale of a Field Hospital’ for similar history nerd reasons.

· The first trailer for the series (with the chanting) was meant as a mood piece, but has absolutely nothing to do with the meta plot. It was recorded before half of the meta plot was even established.

· The Magnus Institute, beyond the Archival staff and Elias, is just a legitimate supernatural academic research institution. The library does exactly what it says it does (house and catalogue valuable texts on the supernatural). Artifact Storage really does just store and experiment on supernatural artifacts. Research is mostly students working on dissertations and theses. They are even confirmed to run on an academic fiscal year (thanks to whatever fiscal nerd asked that particular question!)

· All the supernatural things encountered in the show are tied to the powers, but Jonny does not categorically deny that other supernatural stuff exists in the TMA universe. It very simply won’t be addressed in the show, as introducing other supernatural stuff beyond the powers wouldn’t work this late in the story. The powers play with folklore, but they do not necessarily generate folklore themselves.

· For purposes of the story, every power only has one ritual we need to be concerned about.

· BIG ANSWER: no power has completed a ritual to date. The rituals are now confirmed to so radically change the fabric of reality that there is no one on the planet who wouldn’t notice a successful ritual or be effected by it in a massive way. We are not living in a world in which the Beholding has already succeeded, or any other power. Jonny would not answer whether or not it was possible to reverse or somehow mitigate a successful ritual. And that makes me very suspicious that the season finale of season 4 will be the successful completion of the Watcher’s Crown, and season 5 may be trying to reverse or mitigate it in some way.

· Leitner is likely to return (one would imagine in one of Gertrude’s tapes).

· Jonny and Alex have made the deliberate decision not to overly describe any of the major characters beyond their plot-relevant descriptors (Tim is described as attractive, but we will not get any details of that attractiveness). Jonny doesn’t even have confirmed ages for most of the characters. He thinks Jon is his age (almost 30). Martin is either a bit older or a bit younger than Jon. Tim, Sasha, and Melanie are ‘young adults’, which Jonny defines as somewhere between 25 and early thirties. Elias is middle-aged. Gertrude and Leitner are old. Trevor is “old as balls”.

· Jon is 100% on the asexual spectrum, but may not use that term to describe himself. He would instead avoid the question, and avoid thinking about it too deeply in general. He would be very uncomfortable describing his own sexuality. Also, Jonny made it very clear that the way Jon grapples with his inhumanity is neither a parallel to nor a comment on his asexuality. He approaches them very differently. He didn’t specify this, but so far as I can tell, he avoids even thinking about his sexuality, but he actively agonizes over his increasing inhumanity. I wonder if we might end up getting a bit more of how Jon thinks about his own asexuality if he and Martin ever get their shit together enough to discuss things.

· The statements are 90% Intangible Horror colonizing Jon’s brain, and 10% Jon is a massive drama queen secretly. They also agreed that, if he did amateur theatre as a younger man, he would have been insufferable.

· Tim, prior to his revenge kick, was into lots of socialization, adventure vacations (rock climbing, kayaking, scuba, etc), and may have also been a bit of a console gamer. “Lots of socializing; adventure holidays; dead.”

· There are no specifics at this point on the characters’ families that haven’t been addressed that Jonny was comfortable discussing, as he wanted to hold those details in reserve for later relevance. He doesn’t want to be beholden to random answers he might throw out right now. He would say (potentially joking) that Martin has a spider (or a series of spiders) that live in his closet over the past year, and he calls it/them George.

· The Admiral is a composite of all the cats in Jonny’s life, which all seem to have odd rank-names (Sir Pouncealot, Ambassador Cat, the Colonel). The Admiral is a reflection of all Jonny’s favorite things about cats.

· We are not going to be meeting any other plot-integral characters we haven’t already heard of. There will be new voices, but they will be names we recognize. There will be no new archival assistants. They’ve played that card.

· The characters with horror-writer last names (Martin, Tim, Sasha, Georgie, and Melanie) all have paranormal research backgrounds. This is why that convention was used for them specifically. Given that they were not certain of the direction they were going to take Basira and Daisy when they were first written, their last names did not follow this.

· Jon cannot compel dogs. Probably.

· Why an owl is the crest of the Magnus Institute (officially): “Owls are weird. They are considered very wise, but actually one of the stupidest animals in the world. They have a very strong field of vision. And, some species of owl, if you look in their ear you can see the side of their eyeball.”

· To serve ANY of the entity is to bring fear and suffering to others. That is what your existence is twisted into.

· Alex is most frightened by the Vast. Jonny is most frightened by the Corruption, but worries his lack of tidiness might tempt its attention.

· My favorite question and answer: if they could fight any writer in hand-to-hand combat, who would it be? They both agreed on HP Lovecraft, because “I could almost definitely take him, and it would be so satisfying.” They both agreed that neither of them would feel bad for punching Lovecraft, which, even as someone who does a yearly reading of a lot of his works … yeah. I’d agree. He had amazing creativity and really laid out my favorite horror sub-genre (debatably Robert Chambers invented it, but Lovecraft properly expanded it into a genre), but there are few authors as in need of a proper walloping as HP Lovecraft. They agreed that others—for Jonny, DH Lawrence, for Alex, James Joyce—were also in need of some fighting, but had serious doubts whether or not they could beat them in hand-to-hand combat (“We’re not exactly prime physical specimens”). Maybe just kicking them in the shins. Jonny admitted to an embarrassing love of a lot of literary ‘classics’ people like to shit on, like “Ulysses” and “Moby Dick”.

And that was that! This is the entirety of the MASSIVE Patreon Q&A. Apparently the one that went up tonight on the website is a very pared-down version of this Q&A (website version is 43 minutes; Patreon version is 1 hour 48 minutes). Not sure which of these answers didn’t make the cut, but here you go! All the delicious meta and answers you could want, fresh from the Patreon!

#The Magnus Archives #analysis #ish #more like infodump for non-Patrons #plus my own speculation #now edited for some glaring grammatical errors I noticed

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kalinara · 8 years ago

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I’ll admit, all this recent discussion has inspired me to think about how I would rewrite season 2, if I had the opportunity and/or the discipline to actually do it.

My first thought, of course, is that I’d want more Rip Hunter. I’m sure this is shocking to everyone. But I’m going to play fair and operate under the assumption that Arthur Darvill would still have his scheduling conflicts and be unavailable for the first half of the season. So, no Rip between episode 1 and episode 9. Rats.

(If I could eliminate the scheduling conflict, then I’d probably move Raiders up to Episode 5 or 6, and establish a few episodes with Phil Gasmer as part of the team. I think it’d be an interesting development to have the crew get to know a version of Rip without all of his baggage, and thus make it sadder/more shocking for them when he returns as evil!Rip.)

I have two main problems with the first half of season 2: the pacing and the lack of a consistent emotional thread for the characters.

I think the Spear concept and the Legion of Doom concept need to be introduced much earlier than episode 8/9. So ideally, I’d want to see the Spear of Destiny namedropped in JSA. They have one of the halves of the medallion after all, so why not mention its connection to a holy relic. It’s not like it took Nate and Amaya more than five minutes to figure that out in Raiders after all.

I’d probably get rid of the future Barry Allen tape entirely. It never really had much of a payoff or relevance to the later plot developments. It was pretty pointless even in Invasion. So let’s scrap it, and work in something else. Maybe some footage of Eobard Thawne or other members of the Legion of Doom. Viewers knew about Eobard as early as episode 2. The characters didn’t learn his name until episode 10. That’s silly. Besides, it’d give them something to consult with Barry about during the crossover.

In terms of specific episodes: I would move Compromised to episode 3. Nate’s powers didn’t play a significant role in that episode, so we can have them be dormant for a little while longer and then manifest in a following episode. I feel like it’s more important to establish a shared core of grief to these characters. This episode reinforces Sara’s grief over Laurel, Amaya’s over Rex, Mick’s over Len, and Sara’s attempt to reconcile her drive to save/avenge Laurel with the Captaincy.

The one catch is that, without Shogun, Ray’s suit is undamaged. But maybe we can have the abomination dude in JSA break it or something.

And while I’m not much of a Captain Canary shipper, I would definitely have Sara react to the Ray-as-Len debacle.

I’d probably jettison Shogun entirely. I love the thought of Samurai-style chaos, but I thought the execution was really poor, and the resolution was really ill-conceived. Except for Ray’s depowering plot, I didn’t feel like it added anything to the season arc.

Nate does need to get his powers, but I think I’d like to make it a sadder story about grief. Okay, maybe this is what I’d do: Nate gets his powers and the Waverider is damaged in feudal Japan. Ideally the Sengoku period, because of the warring states aspect. It’s a lot easier to kill a war leader without fucking up history as much. The team gets taken in by a village that, according to Nate’s history books gets conquered and destroyed by a rival warlord. The team has to decide whether to fight and protect them and possibly change history entirely, or surrender to the inevitable. Since it’s this team, I’d go with the former (but with some added after effects later from this decision.) The subplots would all continue the idea of Sara, Amaya, and Mick dealing with their grief. Ray gets to actually mention losing Kendra too, because it annoys me that the show ignores that grief. We’d also learn from Jax that his attempts to save his father failed.

We can have each character meet someone who reminds them of the people they lost, and by saving those people, they get to address some of their grief. (Maybe the one that Mick befriends actually betrays the village though. So he doesn’t get as much emotional closure as the others get.)

Compromised says some interesting things, I think, but I’m a little too white to really evaluate the episode in terms of racial issues. I would definitely hope to have willing consultants. I love the idea of a Jax and Amaya episode. And I don’t think slavery should be ignored, since it’s such an ugly part of our history that we try to minimize to this day. But I don’t really have any idea how to handle it sensitively.

I’m really crushed to say this, because I love Jonah Hex, but I’d probably jettison Outlaw Country entirely. IMO, it’s pretty much exactly the same plot as Abominations: time pirate introduces something fucked up into the mid 1800s, and the timeline goes amuck.

I think maybe I’d want to replace it with an episode that involved the entire Legion of Doom (sans Rip or Snart). I did say I wanted to introduce them earlier. OR...

Have Amaya decide that she wants to go and find out what happens to the JSA! There can be an episode where the Legends try to find them/figure out exactly what they were doing before they disappeared. This is where we can introduce the idea of the Spear in depth.

...actualy, combine the ideas. The team tries to find the JSA before they disappear in the 1950s. We get to flesh out Young Obsidian, Mid-Nite, and Stargirl a bit more so that we actually care. The Legion are here trying to get to the spear BEFORE Rip hides it. The Legends get to learn about the Spear as they go, and then they get into a match up with Eobard, Dahrk, and Malcolm.

We can show a shadowy figure recruiting the JSA and looking very sinister, in a comic booky way. The Legends stop the Legion, but in the mean time, the shadowy figure takes the JSA, gets the Spear, and they’re all gone. And at the very end, we see that the shadowy figure is Rip himself.

I wouldn’t touch Invasion. And Lily still exists thanks to Compromised (the Martin’s memory thing might extend a bit longer, and I’d love to have Jax play a bigger role all along.

Chicago Way would have to be a bit different too, to accommodate. The Legion isn’t new anymore. But I’d like to maybe introduce a subplot: a villain descended from someone in the village that the team saved. (Tatsu lives too though, so it’s not all bad.) Then we get some hint of consequence to the team’s chaotic methods. The team still trades the medallion for Martin. I’d like a bit more aftermath for Sara’s grief though, since this is right after Invasion. We can have more bonding with Amaya.

It occurs to me that, without Outlaw Country, Ray will need another means to repair his suit. But maybe that can be incorporated into Chicago Way, since that episode would need to be pretty different to accommodate the pacing change. I’d like him to have a bit more of a triumphant moment without the suit though, so maybe he can have a good triumphant moment in my hypothetical JSA-Spear episode. (And we can get a reference as to HIS history with Darhk as well. Maybe in Out of Time or Compromised.)

So, yeah, that would be how I’d rewrite the first half of season one. Still no Rip, but a bit more of a sense of metaplot:

Out of Time, JSA (name dropping the spear), Compromised (introducing the Legion), Replacement for Shogun, Abominations, JSA-Spear Episode, Invasion, Chicago Way.

I’ll probably save my thoughts on the second half of season 2 for another post.

#legends of tomorrow #in which I prove that I'm not above stealing other people's ideas

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ragnell · 8 years ago

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So someone brought up Kylo Ren and "redemption arc" in the same sentence again and it has me thinking about why I don't think Kylo is getting one. And I don't know if I've blogged it yet. Basically, it's not really anything to do with Kylo's persoanlity.

We've had two of these trilogies before and everyone is looking for patterns. "Ep VIII is gonna have this because it was in BOTH RotS and RotJ" sort of stuff. But looking at the overall pattern of both trilogies, I noticed something: REcurring themes. Not the recurring themes throughout the saga itself, but there's a lot in the PT that leads up to Anakin's betrayal and a lot in the OT that leads up to Vader's redemption. Little things that just made the act of having Vader turn back to the light just the most natural part of the OT even though it wasn't something you'd think was possible. And the PT, while not handled as well, had all of these little beats that drove home the idea that he was gonna turn on the Jedi.

In the first movie, Vader is a stock scary villain and we don't really see anyone switch sides. However, one of the main characters is HAN. Han is an absolute douche in the cantina. Han gets into a shootout. Han lies to Obi-Wan and Luke when they show up to hire him. Han is established to be a drug runner working for a mob boss who keeps the entire community in poverty and terror. Han makes fun of our Jedi pair. When they get stuck in the Death Star, Han initially declines to save the princess even though she is about to be executed. He only gets involved when money is promised. Oh, and he takes the money and actually leaves Yavin. They establish several times that he ahs some redeemign traits like courage and giving a shit about Chewbacca, and Luke, and Leia once he actually sees her. In the end, he actually returns. Han undergoes the first redemption arc. Next movie, he's actually one of the moral centers of the rebellion.

Then we get the second movie, where we meet Lando, a guy actually working for the Empire and doing stuff for Vader, who actually is willing to turn over Han and Luke to Vader. When he sees just how bad the Empire is, and that Han has changed and there's an innocent woman involved in all this, he turns on the Empire and helps them escape. Lando gets the second redemption arc, set in the second movie. Next movie, he's a big damned hero who helps save Han and destroys the Death Star.

And then the third movie, where we get the payoff and Anakin's first (and last!) good deed in 20 years. By then, we're kind of expecting and accepting redemption.

So, Prequel trilogy. Prequel trilogy has... Zero redemption arcs. Seriously, count them. And not that dude selling death sticks, that dude selling death sticks got mind controlled into not selling death sticks. No one gets redeemed.

What we do have in the Prequel Trilogy is a running theme of Too Many Betrayals to Count. TPM gives us a two major metaplot points based on betrayal: Padme votes no confidence on Velorum who was stated to be one of their biggest supporters (and this is not a knock against Padme, she was a 14 year old who got manipulated), and Palpatine betrayed his own planet by hiring an invasion force. I also kind of count Qui-Gon's cheating on teh bet about Anakin and Shmi to make the dice land on Anakin as a betrayal of his principles, a Jedi should've trusted the Force but Qui-Gon cheated to get what he thought was a fated chosen one (and if it was fate he shouldn't have had to CHEAT), but that's more a Qui-Gon rant than anything else.

In AotC, betrayal builds. Count Dooku, an old student of Yoda's, is initially dismissed by Mace as a villain because "it's not in his nature." Dude turns out to be Sith. Watto is acting all friendly to Anakin after he sold the guy's mother. Anakin betrays his principles in his grief by killing innocent people. The Jedi are supposed to be against war, but Obi-Wan's investigation tells him a Jedi commissioned the Clone Army. Jar-Jar Binks votes to create the Army after Padme "Biggest Opponent of a Galactic-Level Army Creation Act" Amidala put him in charge while she's away. And of course, Palpatine continues to exist and act against everyone who trusts him.

Then in Revenge of the Sith it all goes to hell and we get the slaughter of the Jedi and the wholesale destruction of the government.

There is no redemption in the PT. There is some betrayal in the OT but it's balanced out by redemption. TYhe difference is pretty clear.

So, the ST. Surely, some of you are arguing, that'll be about redemption like the OT because JJ likes the OT and well.. I don't think so. For one thing, there's no significant redemption arc in TFA.

"But Finn!" Uh, not really. See, Finn never did anything he needed to be redeemed for. He was there at the village, but he didn't actually hurt any innocent people. It's implied from the way he's the only one who stops to help a fallen trooper that this is the way he's always been. Every piece of supplemental material we get says this is the way he's always been. He's never done anything to need a redemption arc.

Rey also doesn't do anything wrong. Han's been long since redeemed, he's just a bit lapsed. Leia, Poe, and the resistance people are all good to the core. Maz is a introduced as a pirate but is clearly a lightsider and a good guy. We don't know exactly why Luke went to the First Temple so we don't know if HE did anything wrong (and he does nothign to make up for it if he did.) All of the bad guys-Kylo, Hux, Phasma, Unkar, the gangs after Han, Snoke the other troopers-stay bad.

There's no redemption in TFA. And there's no real betrayal either. We get introed to Finn the moment he chooses a side, and they establish he was brainwashed so he owed them no loyalty. We know Kylo turned on Luke but that was also in the backstory, and the moment with Han was a betrayal but it was also him staying on the same side he'd been on all movie anyway. The running theme of the Sequel Trilogy will be something different. Something that happened in TFA that will also happen in Ep VIII, reinforcing the idea in our minds, and lead to the Big Moment in Ep IX

And that's why I don't think Kylo's getting out of this. Not because I find him so personally unlikeable, or because I'm giving Vader a pass for being cooler, or evne because he killed Han specifically. But because that was the one moment in TFA they COULD have established there was going to be a running theme of redemption, and they passed it up to double down on that character being bad.

#star wars

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