Someone to identify with or someone to cheer on?
By
ClawsandEffect,
Posted on: 2010-09-02 03:12 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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neither, provided the story is compelling and the characters well drawn.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
When experiencing a good story, do you need someone to identify with, or would you rather have someone to cheer on?
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Plucking just one example from modern pop culture, there isn't really anyone in either Godfather movie I'd want to identify with or cheer on, yet they deliver one of the signature cinematic experiences available.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
Here's something else that struck me as a good question to ask about a story: "What have we accomplished here?" Have you ever watched a movie, read a book or played a game that, when it was all over and done and the credits were rolling, left you asking: "OK, if that's how it ends, then what was the point of the whole story?" In other words, do you feel that most, if not all, elements in a story should serve some purpose to the narrative and that that narrative should lead to some kind of logical conclusion formulated as the result of the events preceding it?
I ask this mostly in relation to "they all die" endings. There are quite a few movies out there which spend an hour and a half dicking around with exposition that gets made completely irrelevant by the end of the movie because the only person who could have made something out of this exposition gets killed by cultists, just to give a random example. Personally, that makes me ask what the movie accomplished, then. What point does a story have when the events shown in it end up making not a lick of difference?
Now, I can easily see one justification in having such a "story-negating" ending. The characters might all be dead, but WE know. The audience has learned something important about the universe that the story takes place in. That, then, feeds into my original question of identification vs. cheering... Well, somewhat. I suppose that if you prefer to experience a story as an empiric-minded observer, then knowledge give to you as the audience may be good enough, even if the actual in-story universe never alters in any way. I, however, and greatly galled by this, because I tend to experience stories as a "fan," so to speak. I pick one or a few characters I like and I want to see good things happen to them, or indeed if bad things HAVE to happen to them, that at least their involvement mattered in the end. I want consequences to the actions that take place in the story, and preferably consequences beneficial to the characters I'm cheering on.
Cloverfield is a good example of a story I hate, and I'll explain why. I watched this entire movie like a shaky-cam horror flick, and it showed me fear, it showed me bravery, it showed me strife, it showed me danger. And then in the end, everyone who mattered died. So I ask, then - how did anything they did matter? Would it have made a difference if they'd been killed by the little bugs in the subway or crushed by the statue of liberty head right at the start? Who cares what happens to these people when they ultimately die in the end, anyway? What difference does it make? Because from where I'm sitting, it's just an hour and a half's worth of wasted time.
But, hey, that's just me. How do you feel about stories which end in such a way that nothing that went on in them ultimately matters?
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Stories that end like that have always been incredibly polarizing, Sam. As to why they're made, well, several reasons, ranging from "because they wanted to be all edgy and hip", to actual nihilism, that nothing has meaning anyway.
I like stories with such endings, as long as it follows from the narrative. It's a bad situation from the beginning, and it won't end well either. See The Departed. Sometimes there really is no way out alive, or at least unscathed. However if it's too obvious that the bad ending was just for the sake of having a bad ending, then the impact fails and the story suffers. For examples of that just pick any horror movie that has sequels and it'll probably fit.
Yes, "cheering on" can also mean I understand when they die anyway, because of or despite.
Unfortunately, as a visitor on this planet, these rules and guidelines seem to be devised with the intent to please minds that are unlike my own.
That being said...
I just enjoy interesting characters, developments, scenarios.
I enjoy cheering for, cheering against, getting to know the depths of a character or several characters and/or inter-personal dynamics...
I definitely seem to enjoy things of the psychological nature.
I really dislike the whole notion of needing a character to identify with... especially when people (Establishments, institutions, programmed instructors, Hollywood, etc) always equate that to requiring actual humans in science fiction... Or any genre, of course.
It's funny, despite seeing obvious examples done throughout time, people will still cling to rules that they've been told are necessary.
Let's see if I can stop digressing...
I do tend to be rather empathic and open to relating to other beings' situations and ways. No matter their species, phylum, kingdom... single to multiple cells, biological or technological... faces or no faces... I respect all life (Huh, now I'm interested to read a story about nonliving objects... The Tale of the Tumbling Boulder...) and I can get into any interesting and well-written story no matter if the characters' are like me or wholly unlike me.
As for my own character creation...
I always think back on a conversation I had with a table top role-playing partner and longtime friend many moons ago. We were discussing a party of rather evil characters we had played together for a while and she commented on how even those extreme characters shared similarities with ourselves.
It wasn't completely unknown to me, but it was sort of that "huh, I see it all now" discovery point.
All of the characters I create tend to have at least one aspect of myself that I usually amplify (Or, occasionally, extremely minimize).
Now, I tend to delve deep into the psyche of characters that I create, because I have always loved to get fully inside another mind and explore situations through their eyes and neural pathways to see how they interpret and react.
It's basically the same as really delving into a character in an acting role. When you really set yourself to explore their inner selves, often to define it yourself to use that as a springboard for the character's (seemingly) natural behavior.
Sorry if that's all a bit much and/or a load of nonsense to you (the reader), but thems are my enjoyments and hobbies, so to speak. 
I don't have to be cheering on these characters. I don't even necessarily have to like the character. Often times, I find myself enjoying characters that I possibly despise.
I find it interesting.
As I get to know that character that I may despise, I can begin to understand why the person is that way. And, often times, I can sympathize, or at least feel sorry for the character. This goes both for characters that I create and characters that I read and/or watch.
I like my art to reflect life, most of the time, and life, to me, isn't about cheering or jeering on teams scoring or defending against goals... but just an accumulation of moments that sometimes create a remarkable situation that will unfold more remarkable events.
Whomever the players are, there is generally interest in observing and/or experiencing those events, for myself.
Wait, what was the question? 
@Zethustra
"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan
I actually found Fallout 3 to be much more immersive than either Half-Life game. It seemed like in HL every time I really got into it and felt like I was really in there, then on of those pseudo-cutscenes would happen and everyone would be calling me Gordon and either having half a conversation with me or just telling me to do something. I had that same problem with Singularity, a much more recent game.
Other games like Fallout 3 and even S.T.A.L.K.E.R. gave me dialog choices and used a nickname that was bestowed upon me. I felt like I had much more control, even if sometimes none of the conversation options sounded like something I would say.
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I think I'll just have to disagree with you there. True, the way certain stories are told, there really is no way out alive. But then... I really don't want to hear that story. Part of the reason is that, from any story I read, watch or play, I want closure. I want to see the events that take place in it build up to something, to have some form of effect. Because if they don't, then I see no reason for me to have watched the movie, played the game or read the book, if the protagonist just dies in the end and nothing really changes.|
Originally Posted by Primal
I like stories with such endings, as long as it follows from the narrative. It's a bad situation from the beginning, and it won't end well either. See The Departed. Sometimes there really is no way out alive, or at least unscathed. However if it's too obvious that the bad ending was just for the sake of having a bad ending, then the impact fails and the story suffers. For examples of that just pick any horror movie that has sequels and it'll probably fit.
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The way I read stories and, above all else, the way I WRITE stories, is always based on actions and consequences. "Where am I going with this?" An action doesn't have to have an ultimately practical consequence. Such as, for instance, a hero could spend the whole game trying to find the vaccine to stop the evil disease that's killing him, only to realise there is no vaccine and that the disease is actually his own psychosis manifesting as a physical condition. A "you suck" ending would leave it there. The way I'd write the ending is I'd give this "failure" a meaning. All of this wasn't for nothing. Now that he knows what it is, he knows how to combat it, which in turn becomes the other half of the story.
I can respect a game like Silent Hill (but not Silent Hill 2), in that it can give you basically a meaningless ending - it was all a dream, you died in the crash and hallucinated the whole thing. That's fine, because the game also features a non-dower ending if you know what to do. If the whole plot is made irrelevant right at the end, then I have to wonder - why even bother? Why let a protagonist struggle if he's going to lose anyway. Would it honestly have mattered one bit if he'd died right at the start?
Oh, sure, if you end a story five minutes in, as opposed to 90 minutes in, the audience won't see as much of the action, but as far as I'm concerned, the audience can go to hell. When I write a story, I'm invested in the characters and their stories. I am not, not in the slightest, invested in the audience, who they can relate to or what they want to see. If I make the characters feel real enough and their journey powerful enough, it will make for a good story, and basically all the feedback I've ever gotten on basically anything I've written has pointed to the same effect.
In a sense, I write stories not for participants, but for observers, and I naturally crave stories of the same fashion. That's not to say I'm right and everybody else is wrong, but as long as it comes down to opinions, this is mine.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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You should see my character roster. In fact, right now I'm playing a jet black bug lading with giant wings, glowing eyes, cloven feet, carapace arms and no lower jaw. I fly up to Dean McArthur and the first thing he says is something along the line of "Hey baby! What's a cutie like you doing in a dump like this?" I seriously laughed my *** off at Dean's dialogue, within context |
Originally Posted by Electric-Knight
UI really dislike the whole notion of needing a character to identify with... especially when people (Establishments, institutions, programmed instructors, Hollywood, etc) always equate that to requiring actual humans in science fiction... Or any genre, of course.
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But at least I know I'm not the only one who finds the bug lady sexy, so go me!Quote:
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Originally Posted by Electric-Knight
I always think back on a conversation I had with a table top role-playing partner and longtime friend many moons ago. We were discussing a party of rather evil characters we had played together for a while and she commented on how even those extreme characters shared similarities with ourselves.
It wasn't completely unknown to me, but it was sort of that [I]"huh, I see it All of the characters I create tend to have at least one aspect of myself that I usually amplify (Or, occasionally, extremely minimize). Now, I tend to delve deep into the psyche of characters that I create, because I have always loved to get fully inside another mind and explore situations through their eyes and neural pathways to see how they interpret and react. |
Yes, that does indeed mean that if I'm going to write a villain, I will need to "like" that villain. This doesn't always mean I'll like what the villain is doing or agree with his decisions, but it means there's something in that villain that I secretly enjoy. With Ezikiel, it's the fact that you don't play him. He plays you no matter what happens. With Tyler, it's the utter absolutism of wanting to kill all life and replace it with machines, in that "you are beneath my notice" way. With Alexander, it's the complete and unrelenting resolve in pursuing a hypocrite's vision of good. Every villain I make has to have something I like in order to be made in the first place. It's like... OK, he's the bad guy, I know that. But at the same time, there's something about him that's so completely awesome! I probably don't want him to win in the end, but I kind of don't want to kill him off, either.
I prefer being able to cheer for the bad guy from time to time. I hate it when the heroes find some cheap, undignified way to ruin what was an otherwise remarkable scheme. It doesn't feel "earned" then.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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See, I actually kind of liked Cloverfield, because I got what they were doing with it. Usually, any "giant monster ravages the city" movie is told from the perspective of the people who are actively fighting the thing. That one was told from the perspective of the regular people that are just caught in the middle of the whole mess. |
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Cloverfield is a good example of a story I hate, and I'll explain why. I watched this entire movie like a shaky-cam horror flick, and it showed me fear, it showed me bravery, it showed me strife, it showed me danger. And then in the end, everyone who mattered died. So I ask, then - how did anything they did matter? Would it have made a difference if they'd been killed by the little bugs in the subway or crushed by the statue of liberty head right at the start? Who cares what happens to these people when they ultimately die in the end, anyway? What difference does it make? Because from where I'm sitting, it's just an hour and a half's worth of wasted time. |
It had the net effect of causing me to empathize more with the characters being portrayed, because it was not much of a stretch at all to imagine myself in their position. A lot of people I know criticized it for the shaky camera, but to me that was part of the story. I mean, how much are YOU going to care how steady the camera is while you're running for your life?
I kind of got the impression that they all died from the very beginning when they dug the video camera out of the rubble, so it wasn't a shock. It was a good example of outside-the-box filmmaking that got panned way more than it deserved.
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Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately. |
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I.e. War of the Worlds, another movie I utterly hated. But at least in that one Tom Cruise found his wife, and we were all happy about it.|
Originally Posted by ClawsandEffect
See, I actually kind of liked Cloverfield, because I got what they were doing with it. Usually, any "giant monster ravages the city" movie is told from the perspective of the people who are actively fighting the thing. That one was told from the perspective of the regular people that are just caught in the middle of the whole mess.
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This is my bias showing through, but I honestly don't care about "slice of life" stories, even if that slice happens to be a monster attack. While I'll probably suffer the same fate as the people in Cloverfield if a monster attacked my town, this is kind of what I want to ESCAPE from. I know that in real life I'm a weak, wimply dude who'd get eaten as soon as something extraordinary happened, which I don't take great pleasure in. That's why I watch movies and play games about competent people doing thing I am physically incapable of even conceiving of.
I sat through all of War of the Worlds - in a cinema, no less - and I sat through all of Cloverfield, and I was left thinking "Yeah, and? So what? Why do I care about any of that?" Cloverfield had no point. War of the Worlds had no point. They may have been good for atmosphere and "what if" artsiness, but they amounted to nothing, showed me nothing, did nothing. I sat though hours of people running for their lives, and for what? Zilch.
I never cared for any of these people, because I was never given a reason to care about them. All they did was whine and cry. Natural, given the circumstances, sure, but not endearing in the slightest. At least Tom Cruise got an out-of-place badass moment with a grenade vest, but the whole movie felt so... Meh.
In fact, I can describe these movies as "Watching something boring while more interesting things are happening off-camera." Again, that's my own personal bias, but I want someone to cheer for, which assumes there's someone who has a reason to be cheer on, i.e. someone who is achieving something above and beyond "run away," Monty Python style. Basically, it's City of Civilians to me. Realistic, maybe, as realistic as disaster movies can be, but not interesting in the slightest. Not to me.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Hehehe
The thing is, I wouldn't exactly refer to either of those movies as very well written or anything.
And that's the key, really.
Sure, effects and performances can be exciting and interesting and entertaining, depending on the nature of the piece... But when all is said and done and you think about what you just sat through... it is going to be whether the writing held up to your criticisms.
I'm the same way. However, I don't have the same needs for closure from a story.
I do, however, pretty much demand that there is a a sense of story/purpose/a well designed development of interest that, afterward, I can say, "Ahh, that was well done".
In movies today... it is a rarity.
It's sort of hard to explain, especially since (really) it's a matter of my own opinion. I'm just a fan of craftsmanship. So, when I watch something (I really never stick with a book that I don't have confidence in) that clearly seems to lack that skilled aspect of actually having something to say, I get rather annoyed.
It is the same thing as people who tell a story... that has no point, is not interesting and tells it rather poorly.
"I... uh... went to get coffee... and my car wouldn't start. A bumble bee flew by my ear. And... uh... I realized I had the wrong keys. I went to the store and got tea instead! HAHA!"
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It's never entertaining. 
But yeah... I don't need the main character reconnecting with his wife, nor do I need to love the main characters, nor do I necessarily mind if they die (Although, I really don't like it when it is clearly just "Oooh, I'm so clever, we'll kill them all and it will be C00l!!!" It's not clever, it's not cool... it's sort of typical and boring, in my opinion. Reservoir Dogs may have gotten it okay... been a long time since I watched it and I can't quite remember. I didn't really care for it though. I enjoyed a bit of Tarantino's style, but that movie wasn't all that, for my personal tastes).
As for villains needing some redeemable quality for you to get into them... I can understand that. I think the key for me is in still trying to learn and understand the person even if I despise them.
I may not agree with nor like anything about that character... However, if I can see valid reasons for why that character is like that, it makes it interesting to me. So much so that I might want to explore further and see if maybe, just maybe, I can actually find something that I can relate to and/or like about that person. Whether I do or don't doesn't matter so much as just simply enjoying the exploration to find out.
Thanks Sam. Haven't really thought about this sort of thing in a while!
(My apologies for a bit of a random series of replies... I was only going to reply quickly to the first thing before running afk for a while, hehe... but you know how it is!)
@Zethustra
"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan
Re 'rocks fall everyone dies' endings: I hate them with a passion when the ending invalidates the rest of the plot. But I can like them quite a bit when 'everyone dies' is an actual resolution of the plot. I guess you could say 'everyone loses' or 'bad guy wins' would be in that category too. If you discover, at the end, that the point of the movie was actually, "This is how it all ended up going wrong," then it works for me.
But if it's like, "LOL nevermind aliens nuked it anyway," then I throw things at my television and that's not a nice thing to make me do.
I loved 'The Departed'; it reminded me of a Shakespeare tragedy. You wouldn't say 'Hamlet' was pointless because it ended with a pile of corpses, right? Because winning wasn't the point. It was the story of how people take a bad situation and, while trying to fix it, actually make it worse, and the human drama that comes out of it. Love that stuff.
Of course, I always have to watch a comedy afterwards to clear my mind. It's possible to have too much tragic human drama.
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See, I don't specifically mind "everyone dies" endings as long as it feels like everyone dying somehow accomplishes something at the end, something that the rest of the movie had a hand in. For instance, the entire plot of all three Soul Reaver games (well, two Soul Reaver games and Defiance) centred around Raziel trying to change the past and fix things, save himself and avoid going into the blade. Right at the very end, he realises that the one thing the world needs saving from is the late Tony Jay, which requires that he is absorbed into the blade. Thus, the culmination of three episodes of Raziel trying to save himself from the Soul Reaver ends up with him being consumed by the Soul Reaver. It feels like a downer ending.|
Originally Posted by Driver 8
Re 'rocks fall everyone dies' endings: I hate them with a passion when the ending invalidates the rest of the plot. But I can like them quite a bit when 'everyone dies' is an actual resolution of the plot. I guess you could say 'everyone loses' or 'bad guy wins' would be in that category too. If you discover, at the end, that the point of the movie was actually, "This is how it all ended up going wrong," then it works for me.
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Only it isn't. The entire plotline serves a purpose in shaping, then reshaping Raziel's outlook on like and his understanding of events, transforming him from an angry spirit into a true hero. Sacrificing his existence right at the end, while not a happy sunshine and raibows ending, is still a culmination of his character development, and it achieves something - it gives Kain the tool he need to combat the Elder God, but beyond that it gives him the awareness he lacked all these years to know what it was that he needed to combat. The protagonist dies, but his death had a meaning which his past experiences gave it.
By contrast, something like The Last Exorcism, while being an otherwise good movie, has an ending which invalidates the plot entirely. It raises the question of "if the protagonist had never existed, what would have changed?" We wouldn't have had the "authentic" footage to sit through, true, but would events have changed? Because I don't think so.
I'm actually reminded of the Nostalgia Critic's review of the Flintstones movie, where about half of his review consists "...aaand another pointless scene..." Pointless scenes are what I HATE in movies. That's not to say everything should have plot points in it, but no scene should ever exist for no reason. To set the mood, to provide characterisation, to provide development, to move the plot, to give us something cool to look at, just SOMETHING! But when everybody dies at the end, here's what is instantly invalidated and rendered pointless:
*Their character development - no-one is alive to remember it.
*Their adventures - no-one survived.
*Their emotions and romances - all participants are dead.
*Their revelations - no-one will ever know.
*THE MOVIE - because if none of these events had taken place, it would not have mattered one bit.
The underdog is interesting because he defies the odds and wins. The survivors are interesting because they survive when they shouldn't. The hero is interesting because he achieves what others couldn't. If I see great danger that looks like no-one could survive it and, sure enough, no-one does, my reaction is "Well of course! Why did I need to watch a movie to reaffirm what I already knew?"
Again - this is my bias showing, but I want to watch a movie, read a book or play a game that defies expectations and defies the odds and gives me something that realistically should not happen.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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We each have our own approaches, it seems. Myself, I tend to approach everything I experience as THE writer. "How would I write this. How would I tell that?" I'm perfectly capable of tolerating a villain who's a complete hideous, unlikable monster, and to be fair, some of the most basic, most satisfying storytelling devices is including a complete monster villain that the audience hates with a passion, cheering in vindication when he suffers the humiliation conga or the self-disposing villain death. We hate the ******, so we're ecstatic when he suffers and dies. Yeah!|
Originally Posted by Electric-Knight
As for villains needing some redeemable quality for you to get into them... I can understand that. I think the key for me is in still trying to learn and understand the person even if I despise them.
I may not agree with nor like anything about that character... However, if I can see valid reasons for why that character is like that, it makes it interesting to me. So much so that I might want to explore further and see if maybe, just maybe, I can actually find something that I can relate to and/or like about that person. Whether I do or don't doesn't matter so much as just simply enjoying the exploration to find out. |
But that's a one-sided story. It's basically hero vs. elemental evil. The villain in such a case gets very little characterisation beyond "He's evil, yo! Hate 'im!" The villain doesn't come off as a real person, he comes off as the polar opposite antagonist of the likeable protagonist. It's satisfying, but it's also very simplistic, as well. Instead, I try to give my villains context, and I prefer to experience stories that give their villains context, as well. You can still make a hatable villain by the end, essentially by having him drop the act, run out of patience, get desperate or otherwise show his true face. That suave, smooth-talking trickster may finally suffer glamour failure, break down and show himself as the psychotic wimp he truly is, but that doesn't mean that he can't be the dashing plotting mastermind for the previous rest of the story.
I enjoy villains who feel that they've earned their right to be evil. An evil overlord who built his empire out of nothing, learning that people are weak and need to be led by a stronger individual along the way feels like he deserves his ambitions. The momma's boy who inherited his empire and spends all his time whining about how nobody likes him and they'll all pay DOES NOT deserve to be the antagonist. He deserves to have heroes storm his castle and slap him on the mouth.
In essence, if I watch a story with a villain I hate, I want it to end as fast as possible, because I want to see the dude get his comeuppance. If I watch a story with a villain I actually like, then I want to see it run on for a while, just because I like the guy and I want to see him get as close to success as possible. Because he's cool. A hatable villain I'll want to be tricked and killed in a moment of weakness. A cool villain I want to see reach the absolute peak of his power and then be defeated honourably. That's the difference, I suppose.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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You know, it just dawned on me that I may possibly reviewing this subject from a very skewed perspective. I recently mentioned to a friend of mine "But the movie didn't make me feel good." and he responded "You shouldn't watch movies like that if you want to feel good." It occurs to me that, these days, I watch movies for one reason and one reason only - to have fun in the most literal sense of the word. I play games because they give me a smile (or optionally, an evil grin) and make me go "Yeah! I wanna' do that again!"
I tried to be cultured. Honestly, I did. I tried to make myself enjoy more intellectual pursuits such as deconstruction stories, philosophical stories, intentionally depressing dramas and suchforth. Most I hated, yes, but even the ones I liked, I liked in principle, but not in practice. When such a story was over, I would often tell myself of all the ways in which it was great and creative and amazing... And yet I shuddered at the prospect of watching it again. I was telling myself that this unpleasant, unenjoyable feeling I had just experience was somehow "good" and that even if I didn't feel it, "knowing" it was good made me somehow more cultured.
Then I played this game and I started making characters like a large winged purple bunny girl inspired by a porn comic book (the now-defunct Bunny Love, if anyone cares), then I made a Slime girl, then I made a time-travelling communist elf... The list goes on and on, and I am having such ecstatic fun with all of that that you wouldn't believe me if I described it. When I play most of my newer characters, I occasionally have to stop and remind myself that this is actually really happening. This isn't another one of my "if only" fantasies. This is really happening in an actual, real game.
Somewhere along the line, my preferences flipped completely on their face. I guess I abandoned the not insignificant amount of compulsion I felt towards things I felt I should like, but actually really didn't. I dared to be stupid, and intentionally so. And I liked it. A LOT. For some time now, I've tried to avoid high-brow culture as much as I could, for the simple reason that... Well...
A lot of stories make me wish for The Last Action Hero's take on Hamlet as a remake of the actual stories. A lot of those stories would be completely ruined by that, yes, much like people said about Silent Hill Homecoming's greater emphasis on combat efficiency, but you know what? That kind of ruination is the kind of ruination I approve of. I've watched a thousand monster movies where people barely scrape by and get picked off by the monsters one by one. Even the frikkin' Doom movie was like that. Some days, I pine for the ridiculous over-the-top badassery that was C&C Renegade. "Me against the entire NOD elite? Don't seem fair, does it? Maybe I'll shoot left-handed." I wonder if Duke Nukem: Waiting Forever (if that's actually released) will be like that.
Basically, I'm tired of high drama and the things I enjoy are the things that can at all be cheered on.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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I never think of identifying with my character or cheering the character on either. I dont really identify with perspective characters in movies or TV much either now that I think about it.
I'm literally treating COH as a video game, in that I'm enjoying using the powers and leveling up and trying out new powers. But the story doesn't particularly draw me in as a participant or a side-taker. I just dont react to fiction that way. In COH, I take the missions that the character (in my understanding of what the character is like) would take, and then I do the missions, but its about the actual gameplay itself, and its about watching the cool animations and seeing the cool costumes and about the rewards/loot/XP and etc for me.
Identification? Cheering? Not usually.
Lewis
Random AT Generation!
"I remember... the Alamo." -- Pee-wee Herman
"Oh don't worry. I always leave things to the last moment." -- The Doctor
"Telescopes are time machines." -- Carl Sagan
Hehe, Sam
While I'm not in the same place, I always say, there is always place for the immeasurable value of enjoying a simple clown and his follies or the laughter of children or whatever simple thing you can find yourself enjoying.
Heh, I sort of feel the need to follow that up by the idea that it can go too far if it bleeds into all aspects of life and intellect. You don't want to become a completely culture depraved maroon.
Somehow I doubt that will happen to you.
Eb and flow, Sam.
The tides of man need not follow any schedule.
Or... more to your current state...
Yeah dude! Have fun!! That's really the only thing we can do, hehe!
@Zethustra
"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan
It's more than just a current state. It's just a current realisation. I've always been fascinated by the absurd, but the bold and by the unusual. It's just that it's taken me quite literally 20 years to shake off basically my entire upbringing and 12 years of school that's probably 50 years behind times. I managed to let society dictate what I should like and what I should hate, and I'm slowly remembering what it was that I had fun with.
Again, as Linkara says: "It's Superman fighting twin clones of Hitler in the future! How do you screw that up?!?"
I'm not opposed to culture, the poetry (in the abstract sense), to drama or anything of the sort. What I'm opposed to (or rather, not a fan of), is the kind of high-brow critique which believes that true art cannot be enjoyed, that true art is angsty, true art is incomprehensible, true art is offensive or whatever other quote you want to pull out of TVtropes. The very notion that I am supposed to approve art that I do not enjoy is alien to me, and this will not change, especially not now that I've been able to put it into a phrase I can repeat.
You very much can have very serious, very moving themes within stories which are otherwise either absurd or ridiculous. I need but mention the title of something like Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go! to cause people who haven't heard of it to snerk, but I'll pick that over most stories out there nevertheless, because it's written well. I need my stories to be interesting, to be exciting and to be fun. I have no interest in watching people slowly live out their depressing lives. I don't need a TV set for that.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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When I originally said "someone to cheer for," I didn't really think to exclude villains from that. I see no reason to. After all, we have an entire side of the game called City of Villains where we play the villain and do the evilnessnessness. Frankly, if I COULDN'T cheer on the villain of the story, I'd say I'm playing the wrong game. So, so, SO much of all three sides of the game relies on having good villains that you're not irritate to have to deal with, but are actually supposed to be impressed by. Sure, some people are never impressed by anything and other people can never root for a villain, but that's just how it goes, I guess. It doesn't mean the actual game doesn't encourage it.
That's actually where most of my gripes with City of Villains come from - it does a TERRIBLE job of presenting our villains as "the villain of the story." It does a bad job at presenting or villains as a good antagonist for a good protagonist. It doesn't even do a good job of presenting our villains at antagonists at all. Most of the missions make us out to be super-powered thugs with no ambitions, no class and no dignity. "Brownie points with the Spiders" my ***! I will never get over that! At least the Clone Factory Saga is decent in that regard.
But, yeah - nothing wrong with cheering on the bad guy. Nothing wrong with identifying with the bad guy, either, in fact. That's what a well-written bad guy should inspire, in my opinion.