Episode 583 - Why is it bad?
May 16, 2022
Spoiler- we don't actually talk much about Yu-Gi-Oh! But I feel it's a good example of a pretty bad a so-bad-it's-good story, but bad nevertheless. The idea we're talking about here is that it's useful to look at bad stories and stick with them because they can really help you write better. They're a lot more useful than good stories because you'd rather just enjoy those and it's a bit harder to examine them for technical details, but with “bad” stories the faults stand out strongly. Instead of simply dismissing a bad story or making fun of it, it's more useful and valuable to try and “fix” it: try and work out why it seems bad and think about what would be needed to make it better, then think about how that applies to your own work. Maybe you're actually making many of the same mistakes?
Topics and Show Notes
Yu-Gi-Oh! is a little too much work to use as an example, but something like the Marvel movie Eternals is good because it only had a few flaws. Big ones, but also very good parts as well:
- Lots of telling rather than showing. A text dump at the beginning was just the start of that. It wasn't stylistic choice like in Star Wars, but rather something we need to understand what is happening. All through the film characters tell us about things rather than the story properly depicting them.
- Revealing the solution to mysteries too early and so it undercuts built up tension. Mysteries are really interesting and intriguing to the audience, even when they think they've solved them, it still feels very rewarding to have them revealed nearer to the end of the story. Revealing them far too early feels like you're being cheated and wastes a valuable resource. Eternals does this twice with very significant mysteries about halfway through.
- Having generic, cannon-fodder bad guys. This is true of many action stories especially from Marvel films, but it's particularly bad here. Saying any more would be a spoiler. But this is something that Yu-Gi-Oh! does far better.
- Leaving out information that would better make sense of story elements. We have the character Icarus refereed to frequently as “the Pilot” by another character who's never met him before, but we have no idea why. A deleted scene reveals why, but without that it makes no sense, you're just left to feel it's a pointless joke about the Icarus myth, which it's not.
- Not solving logic errors. The characters are supposed to be the basis for mythical figures in earth cultures but most are of different ethnicities to the cultures that worship them. This could have been easily solved in two ways: 1. the character “Sprite” could have been shown to have created illusions around them to make them seem like the characters of myth. 2. The character Druig could have been shown to manipulate people's minds to think they were seeing the mythical characters. The story does neither.
Despite all this and more there are many good points to this story and it would be possible to fix it through re-editing. I found it more rewarding and interesting to work out what exactly made this not such a good film and it helped to better highlight the good parts for me. It also helps me see what to avoid in my own writing and what I'm doing wrong. Try it yourself? Maybe you can tackle Yu-Gi-Oh! and let us know how that could be fixed?
I'm not brave enough.
This week Gunwallace has given us a theme to - Malefic Demonic Apocalypse - A creepy red garden filled with writhing demonic monstrosities and horror! This electronic piece grinds and roars, sounding like an acidic, burning harpsichord spewing fury and vitriol in a crimson torrent.
Topics and shownotes
Links
Our movie critique thread does this somewhat - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/forum/topic/177412/?page=36
Featured comic:
Oni Streamer Builds a Mech - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/may/10/featured-comic-oni-streamer-builds-a-mech/
Featured music:
Malefic Demonic Apocalypse - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Malefic_Demonic_Apocalypse/ - by Genejoke, rated M.
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
PitFace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
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Episode 576 - Retro Adventure heroes
Mar 28, 2022
Retro adventure heroes are an interesting and unique sort of hero. The trope was revived and crystallised by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg with Indiana Jones, but it had existed long before then and continues to persist now in many forms. They're not without their problems But I like these characters. I love their outfits, their competency, intelligence, self sufficiency, and their penchant for exploration and discovery.
Episode 573 - Join the cult?
Mar 7, 2022
Cults are weird. Unlike normal religions (from which many cults stem), cults are usually based more around charismatic individuals rather than simple doctrine. Which means the followers of cults can often get a little crazy because they're following the whims of an individual rather than boring old text from a book. And this is why religious groups with charismatic leaders (i.e evangelical Televangelists and hardline Imams), become crazy and cultish too.
Episode 572 - Myths of fiction part 2
Feb 28, 2022
Last week we did a thing of the persistent myths of fiction- fictional conventions that we all just accept, and are repeated over and over and even influence real life- for example: that people are blasted back in reaction to being shot. It started as a way of making shooting scenes more dramatic and obvious on film, but became a convention and we all believe it so much that it influences reality- it's part of the famous JFK conspiracy about a “second shooter” because people foolishly think JFK's head rocking “back and to the left” indicated the direction of a gunshot. The kinetic energy of a bullet is imparted to the medium it strikes, typically through heat and destruction when it hits a soft target like a human.
Episode 566 - feeling the vibe!
Jan 16, 2022
Let's talk about total immersion… When consuming media rather than creating it, if you're lucky you become immersed: the struggles and fears of the character become your own. You feel for them, you care, their pain, their hunger, even their shivers and sweats, you care about the world in which they live… That can be an amazing feeling and it's pretty much WHY we really enjoy and keep consuming media. Themes, great visuals, intellectual explorations of ideas and concepts are all very well but nothing compels and excites you as much as when you really CARE what's happening. So that's what we're chatting about! Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Episode 562 - the plots the themes - The space between
Dec 20, 2021
Merry Christmas and whatever you celebrate :) Interesting topic from Banes! It's his idea that sometimes the literal elements of a story (the plot etc.) are simply too weak to properly support the theme. He gives the example of The Truman show, where the idea is that a person is living a fake life under constant surveillance as the star of one of the most popular real life TV shows ever and he doesn't know anything about it… The themes are the power of the media, commercialism, the American dream, obsession with reality TV etc. Banes felt that although these themes were very strong the practical setup of the world and story weren't quite strong enough to support it.
Episode 558 - The surreal adventures of Edgar Allen Poo aka Dwight L Macpherson!
Nov 22, 2021
Interview with Dwight L Macpherson, creator of The surreal adventures of Edgar Allen Poo, now known as The imaginary voyages of Edgar Allen Poe! Dwight joined DD back in the old days, well over a decade ago. Back then he hosted his comic with us, about Edgar Allen Poe. From the very beginning I could see that both it and its author were destined for bigger and better things and I'm pleased to say that came to pass. Through a lot of hard work, with the efforts and both him and his wife working as a team, Dwight has found success as an independent published author with a number of projects under his belt and more ongoing ones in the pipeline.
Episode 556 - That's What She Said!
Nov 8, 2021
The other day Tantz Aerine wrote a newspost about an article critical of Squid Game. The crux of things was that the Squid Game creator had said their message was anti-capitalist, while this critic was saying that the author's message with the Squid Game was an anti communist critique and not a very good one at that. The issue here is that isn't how you do criticism. At all. You can give an interesting reading of something and tell us why YOU think it's anti-Communist, or tell us how it looks through the lens of post-colonialism or new wave feminism etc, but you can't say that is what the author is saying or what the work means, especially if the author explicitly says WHAT they are saying. This may seem like a small distinction but it's actually very, very important. Bad criticism often tells us what the creator is saying. Don't do that. Don't be that person.
