 |
| Alt-text: For some reason, my childhood suspension of disbelief had no problem with the fact that this ancient galaxy is full of humans, but was derailed by language. There's no Asia OR Europe there, so where'd they get all the Indo-European roots? |
Actually, scratch the ambivalence - that first panel is terrible.
The joke itself is par for the course, in that it makes little sense and isn't funny. The garbage in the alt-text about Indo-European roots is simply a convoluted way of saying 'aliens shouldn't be able to speak English'. Obviously he can't say it like that, otherwise the shallow tiredness of the point becomes very, very apparent.
Star Wars is basically a fairy story - it's not 'hard' sci-fi and it doesn't pretend to be. Complaining about the language would be like complaining about noise in space, or ships moving as if in an atmosphere, or any of the tired old bullshit pulled out by nerds with nothing better to do. Everyone knows it's for the sake of convenience and allowing the story to be told, and no-one wants to be bogged down in explanations about why we can understand what's going on.
Also, Randall manages to put together a situation that doesn't make sense. If Luke hasn't heard the word 'falcon' before, wouldn't he just assume it was a name? Why would he ask what it was?
Anyway, if you want an insightful look into why Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and other nerd favourites are terrible stories, go and read Nick Lowe's brilliant article.
BINGO TIME!
Thanks once again to Jon Levi.
To prove his sanity, Jon has taken to ticking off the boxes in the most carefully regimented way possible. His psychopathy knows no bounds.
That article was a pretty good read. Other than LOTR, Star Wars and Hitchikers though, I must admit I was not familiar with most of the subject matter he was discussing. But that didn't really hinder the message getting through.
ReplyDeleteYou nailed it. Randall's alt-text literally makes like no sense as written, all he's saying is "why do these aliens speak English" in a way that sounds cursorily intelligent if you're an idiot.
ReplyDelete@Rinnon - That article is pretty much my favourite thing on the internet. And it was from before the internet!
ReplyDeleteHasn't Randall ever read this page?
ReplyDeletehttp://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TranslationConvention
Who is the SF that Mr. Lowe keep referring to in his article?
ReplyDeleteOh sorry, he means Science Fiction when he says SF... Duh!! I thought he was talking about a publishing house or some other such thing... Anyway, thanks :)
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteYeah, it was a pretty excellent article. Though, I have to admit it causes great ambivalence in me. On the one hand, it's taking apart childhood favourites of mine (Hitchikers Guide and LOTR), books I had long held up to others as examples of good literature. On the other hand... well he's not wrong (The softer way of saying he's right.)
ReplyDeleteIt's hard to remain impartial when someone is attacking (if you want to get all emotional and use that word) a piece of {Art, Writing, Music, Film} that you had long since believed was in fact well done. It makes you feel like you don't know what the fuck you're talking about on the subject. (It's the reason why our XKCD Fanboys get so pissy when they come here!) But at the end of the day, I have to either refute his points, or acknowledge that he is correct. (Something our XKCD Fanboys don't seem to get!)
So there it is, I acknowledge that he is right, and I discard 20 years of thinking I knew good writing when I saw it. Live and learn. Maybe I should take a Classic Literature course next semester or something.
PS: I really had to fight with the Comment Box to get this out there.
The article was very interesting, but I agree with Rinnon's ambivalence. I don't think that all of the things he points out are necessarily bad. He points to some obviously bad examples of them, but the article even states that sometimes you can get away with it (the One Ring obviously is a plot coupon, but is it a bad one?)
ReplyDeleteSince this article reads as a sort of proto-TV-tropes, I feel it's only fitting to point out that Tropes Are Not Bad. :)
I understand the ambivalence you all felt. It was slightly worse for me as I read Stephen Donaldson's books wen growing up and thought they were great, and you can see what he thinks of him!
ReplyDeleteStill, the points he made were so compelling I was forced to agree. The plot coupon thing is so prevalent fantasy, especially in games. Although it makes a bit more sense in a game (Collect the coupons! Win the Game!), it still feels lazy. It makes me wince whenever I see it now.
And to be honest, I've never liked LOTR that much.
Heresy!
I don't like LotR that much either, but it's more to do with the plodding, overly descriptive writing style than the actual narrative.
ReplyDeleteTolkien is a great world builder. He's not that great at actually telling a story, imho.
Are we going to have bingo already for the three comment threads of 889? Or do you want me to do it again?
ReplyDeleteQuinctilius Varus!
ReplyDeleteGive me back my Legions (of Kittens)!
You forget the time-honoured myths of the 'Noble Savage' and the 'White Messiah' as literary devices for the intellectually less fortunate.
Sheesh! All these childhood favourites y'all have. I did not become aware of them until I was an adult. They are all just copies of the Classics.
Rhinnon said:
ReplyDelete"....Maybe I should take a Classic Literature course next semester or something....."
I'd choose the something option. Best you remain wallowing in the bliss of the Modern.
LOTR kind of messed up my understanding of literature in that sense Sven. I read LOTR for the first time when I was 9. I had a hellish time getting through it, and I thought that was just on account of the fact that I wasn't as experienced a reader as I could have been. I figured all "adult" books were like this and I'd just become a better reader as I went on. Obviously, I've never since read a book that spent as much time as LOTR describing the colour of the canopy of a specific forest.
ReplyDeleteAs a side note, I always found The Hobbit a more enjoyable read.
On the topic of games though, I'm more willing to give a pass to plotting issues in that medium (Genre depending). Legend of Zelda springs to mind as one of the most clearcut "collect the coupons!" style games. But when you're reading a fiction book, you're reading for the plot, or the characters, so I expect a little more from that when there is nothing else to wow me. In a game, I'm playing for the fun things I'll have to do. If it happens to be kind of lazy that I have to go to death mountain to "collect the spiritual stone of plot" it's okay because the game play on the way there is fun.
....I read LOTR for the first time when I was 9.....
ReplyDeleteAt age 9 I was reading Cervantes in Spanish - not having learned French or English yet.
And there in lies the difference between U and Non U.
Innit
I'm actually not seeing how the article shows why Star Wars or Lord of the Rings are bad. Now it has been a while since I've read/seen either, so I could be remembering things wrong, but let's look at his complaints...
ReplyDeletePlot coupons: This part I found confusing, because he never really explains why they're bad. I don't see why whether the center of the story is the heroes trying to get some particular items or the heroes trying to engage the enemies more directly somehow makes a story better or worse. Yes, plot coupons can be used poorly, but he makes no explanation as to why they're inherently bad.
Plot vouchers: This is really a subtrope of deus ex machina (characters gets something which is later revealed to have some power that saves him that wasn't established beforehand) but I don't remember this offhand from Star Wars or Lord of the Rings. The powers of the One Ring, for example, were established early and were, as far as I remember, followed throughout the series.
Prophecies: I don't see how these are bad as long as they're used well, but I (again) don't remember examples of such things from Lord of the Rings or Star Wars. Okay, the prequel trilogy had that whole unnecessary prophecy plot point, but we're not talking about the prequels.
Plot generators: Not really applicable to either, because they were of fairly set length.
"Disguised" author: This applies to Lord of the Rings (he quotes it) but the only usage he indicates is Gandalf saying Bilbo was meant to find the Ring. Given that this line, from what I can remember, could've honestly just been cut from the book without any consequences, I can't really consider this to be a big flaw with the series. It'd like be if Gandalf's name was misspelled on a page...sure, it's something that would be preferable to not have happened, but it's an extremely minor problem.
"Disguising" the plot into the characters: This is where he comes to Star Wars and talks about the Force and describes it as "one of those arbitrary, general-purpose, all-powerful plot devices that can be invoked whenever convenient to effect whatever happens to be necessary at the time." He's a bit correct, but I think he exaggerates things. Early on it's established that being skilled in the Force gives you significantly higher sensitivity (as shown when Luke is able to block the laser shots blindfolded) and the level of skill you have affects how good you are with a lightsaber, which again is used. Now, to be fair, they do bring in the "allows dead guys to talk to you" and "lets you kinda maybe see the future" into it in the later films (you can say the part about Obi-Wan talking to Luke in A New Hope is already the "dead guys talk to you" but you could just write it off, in A New Hope at least, as Luke imagining his voice). So yeah, he's kinda right about this, but I don't think it's abused too much.
So overall, I don't see any real criticisms of Lord of the Rings here other than the vague claim that plot coupons are bad (and he does say that it's done better in Lord of the Rings than most), and one line that barely matters. His criticisms of Star Wars are a little better, but still nothing game breaking. The other examples he brings up (Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, The Dark Is Rising) are ones I don't know about to either say "he's right" or "he's wrong" about them.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThe thesis of most of his criticisms came from something specific he said when he was quoting Aristotle. He could have been much more clear about the importance of this point from the beginning, but here is is:
ReplyDelete"[...]Aristotle, who besides some famous remarks about beginning-middle-and-end laid down a few elementary precepts like events in the story having to follow in a relationship of internal logic, and having to appear to arise out of the interactions between characters rather than being obviously imposed from above by an author"
If one assumes that basing your plot points on logical interactions between characters is a good way for the story to move forward, and that having the the story move forward due to the author prodding it along is bad, most of his criticisms make more sense. He does NOT however offer any evidence to support the claim, it is taken for granted.
I'm going to use the Star Wars example to explain why I agree that the above is true.
The Force is what is criticized most heavily here. It is more or less the same thing as "Fate" or "The Will of God" or "Destiny" in that they are all things that can explain what should be unexplainable. If there is something so unreasonable in your story, that you NEED to use one of the preceding examples to explain it, I think it should go without saying that this is a sign of bad writing. You mention that early on the author explains how "The Force" enhances Lukes abilities. Essentially though, that is just us being told that because of this "Plot Device" the main character is going to be better at things than he logically should be, and be capable of doing things he logically shouldn't be able to do. It's used to cover up tons of plot holes all over the place. Luke is a better pilot in the X-Wing than all those experienced fighter pilots? That shouldn't make sense... so we'll say it's because he's strong in the force. It's a cheap way to make sure the main character gets to be the one who blows up the Death Star at the end of the movie. This might be a long shot here, but I'm going to go ahead and suggest that covering up plot holes is a bandaid fix in lieu real solution, which is to NOT WRITE PLOTHOLES. I hope we can agree on that point.
Other than covering up Plot Holes though, The Force is also used to push characters where they need to go, without there being a logical reason for it. Let's look at Empire Strikes Back for an excellent example of that. Luke starts the movie on Hoth with the Rebels, Goes to Dagobah to learn from Yoda, then finishes off with a fight against Darth Vader at Cloud City. If there was no segue between these events, the movie wouldn't make much sense. Anybody would agree with that. We can't just have him Finish his business on Hoth, and then go to Dagobah for no reason at all, nor can we have him drop everything to go to Cloud City for no reason. But there is nothing that connects these 3 events to one another. Because the Author needs Luke to go to a swamp planet to learn from a mysterious Jedi, he steps in and uses "The Force" to tell Luke to go there. He then AGAIN steps in with the force and tells Luke to go to Cloud City. In lieu of logical reasons for these transitions, the force is used as a catch all to usher over the transitions between major plot points. So at this point I'm going to suggest that fudging transitions between major plot points is a bandaid fix in lieu a real solution, which is to CREATE PLOT POINTS WHICH LOGICALLY FLOW TOGETHER. Again, I hope we can agree on this point as well.
In my mind, it's pretty clear that plot holes and plot points which don't connect are problems. Covering them up and hoping no one notices is something a Bad writer would do. A good writer, wouldn't let these things be in there at all.
Part 2
ReplyDeleteIf we agree that covering up Plot Holes and the like with Band Aids is inferior to simply not writing the problems to begin with, here is how that relates to the various suggestion in the article. Because I am a terrible writer, I have regrettably paraphrased much of the Article, but I'm too lazy to re-write it, so I'm going to post it anyways.
Plot Coupons: This is a way for the author to string a series of events together without the characters having a logical reason to do them. The One Ring is imposed upon the Fellowship, which forces them to A) Form the Fellowship of the Ring (Would not have happend logically without The Ring) and B) Forces them to march accross middle earth (Again, wouldn't have happened without The Ring.) It's a bandaid way of getting this group of exceptionally cool people together, as opposed to finding a good reason for each of them TO be there. There's bearly any reason for Frodo to be there at all, save that he has The One Ring. Even that is questionably enough to encourage him to march to Mordor.
Plot Voucher: This is a way to cover plotholes. It lets the author write whatever the hell he wants, and when he realizes he's written himself into a situation where the hero couldn't possibly survive, rather than scrap all those chapters leading up to this situation, we just invoke the Plot Voucher. It covers the plot hole (The main character SHOULD have died, for example, but there are many holes this can cover), rather than re-writing part of the story to avoid the plothole coming up at all. Lazy really.
Prophecies: Same as the Plot Coupons, a way for the author to string together a series of events without needing a good reason for any of them. It can be hard work to think of a logical reason for a series of events to happen, and Prophecies just make it really easy. The series of events don't even have to make sense, but if it's prophecized then the readers won't complain, and somehow you can get a pass on it.
Plot Generators: Again, as most of these, this is a device which is used to lazily insert a Major Plot Point into your story, without needing to think up a compelling reason why it's there. In a manga I read, "One Piece" this is done by having the main characters be on a pirate ship. They sail from Island to Island, and every Island is different! Some of them are Snowy Islands, some of them are Desert Islands, etc. And the Crew of good guys has to follow a set path through the islands, because their compass only ever points towards the next island! It means the characters don't get a choice where they go, don't know what is coming up next, and the Author can send them to whatever style island he wants, without it having to make sense. As mentioned before, this is in liue of writing compelling reasons for the characters to guide themselves to major plot points.
Disguised Author, either as God or as a Character (Or the Force): This can do both of course. It can either be somebody showing up to tell the characters where they should go, or it can be someone showing up to explain why something that didn't make sense at all, actually makes perfect sense. (You know, when an Author contridicts himself and has someone show up to explain that it isn't a mistake, it's just complicated.) As with all of these issues, this is done in lieu of either not writing plot holes that need fixing, and finding logical reasons for your characters to move towards a major plot point.
Three comment threads and still no bingo.
ReplyDeletehttp://img534.imageshack.us/i/bingo889.png/
Why am I now the one who ends up doing this?
Sorry Jon, I had a thesis to do. Thanks for the ones you've done!
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I'm probably going to retire bingo and replace it with some other gimmick about the thread. I'll have to think about it.
Interesting arguments. Let's take them one at a time, beginning with your first post.
ReplyDeleteI don't see the issue with the Force making Luke a decent pilot, this seems a case when it's arbitrarily decided by you or him that it's bad because...it's bad. By that logic you might as well throw in every single fantasy or science thing thing ever away. Wizards are inherently bad because the only reason they're strong is because they studied magic. Every single super power ever? Throw them out too, they're just ways to make things easier for the heroes. Luke trained, he got better at it, and it made him a better pilot and such. I just don't see the problem or how it's forced forward by the author. Heck, you might as well say that Luke getting better at piloting "normally" is prodding forward by the author. I simply don't see how it's covering up plot holes, unless you count every single explanation ever as a covering up of a plot hole. A character does well in a swordfight because they know how to use a sword well? It's covering up a plot hole because otherwise the character wouldn't do well in the swordfight!
Now, your complaints about the usage of the Force in The Empire Strikes back makes a bit more sense, as it's introducing things that weren't there before, e.g. Conversations With Dead People and The Ability to Prophecize. I don't really have too much of a problem with the hearing Obi-Wan because he did earlier on say the bit about becoming more powerful and stuff (though it could've been set up a little better). The prophecy part, however, was pretty much thrown in to make Luke go to Cloud City. That was problematic, but again, not a major enough problem for it to really bother me. The rest of the story was good enough to compensate for this problem.
Second post...
ReplyDeletePlot coupons: The thing is, the case of "without this, this wouldn't happen" applies to pretty much anything in the story. If an antagonist doesn't show up, a story doesn't happen. The author seemed to prefer overcoming enemies in the "traditional" manner...but the thing is, if the enemies didn't show up, then the good guys wouldn't have banded together in the first place to fight them anyway. I don't see how the so-called "plot coupons" are any worse than that. Dismissing the One Ring as "not a good reason" seems awfully arbitrary.
Plot Voucher: Funny you decide to explain why plot vouchers (according to the article's description of the term) are bad, when I never defended it in the first place, though I suppose I could've better articulated my agreement that it's poor writing. My point was that Star Wars and Lord of the Rings didn't use those from what I remember. The One Ring's powers were established early and were not deviated from; Frodo didn't put it on and suddenly it gave him the ability to fly, for example. Likewise, the lightsaber didn't suddenly give a Jedi the ability to breathe in space. I'm not defending stories that introduce some amulet or whatnot, then later on randomly give it some new special power out of nowhere to save someone. That's a deus ex machina, which is generally (but not always) bad writing.
Prophecies: Again a case of, regardless of whether you think it's an acceptable or unacceptable trope, these were not used in the aforementioned stories. That was my point. I still don't see the big problem with them as long as they're not completely abused, but yet again, the point is moot as they weren't used in those stories. Ironically, when the prophecy was used in the prequel trilogy, it was pretty nonsensical (and, when you get down to it, completely unnecessary).
Plot Generator: Another case where my whole point was that it wasn't used in Star Wars or Lord of the Rings. I didn't defend it, though again I don't think it's quite as bad as it's made out to be, it depends on how it's used. I will agree that its usage in One Piece, however, is pretty much just a way to pad out the story. But really, is its usage any word than going to someplace, having someone tell them to go to another place, them going to that place, someone THERE telling them to go to another place, and so on and so forth? According to the logic in the article that's all fine and dandy, but it's ultimately the same thing.
"Author in disguise": Again this doesn't apparently apply to Lord of the Rings outside of the aforementioned one line from Gandalf that doesn't matter. I already discussed it in regards to Star Wars, where I said it WAS used, though not to (in my opinion) a terrible extent.
My point was that it didn't explain why they were "bad" stories because they either didn't apply to them or weren't problematic in the first place. The whole bit with the Force was a bit of a problem in the Star Wars sequels, but again, nothing gamebreaking for me; just because a story has problems doesn't mean it's a bad story, after all, as long as the rest of it is decent enough to compensate. I think it's rather presumptuous to say "see? This story had a PROBLEM in it! That means it's automatically terrible!"
I should probably point out that I was exaggerating a little about LotR and Star Wars. I personally don't like LotR, but I wouldn't say Tolkien was a terrible writer or that he couldn't put together a plot.
ReplyDeleteHaving said that, the ring is a little too convenient a plot device for me. Sauron gets ring - heroes lose, ring destroyed - heroes win. It's that wrapping of the whole plot around a single arbitrary item that bugs me.
As for the Force, I can forgive a little sleight-of-hand in a movie. It's a much more restrictive format.
Harry Potter is completely fucking awful, though.
Me!: I'm going to reply to your comments in the next Blog post, rather than here. Sometimes I wish we had forums for this kind of thing. =)
ReplyDeleteHaving said that, the ring is a little too convenient a plot device for me. Sauron gets ring - heroes lose, ring destroyed - heroes win. It's that wrapping of the whole plot around a single arbitrary item that bugs me.
ReplyDeleteI don't have any real problem with that to be honest. Like I said, I think a conflict over one particular item or a more full-scale conflict is fine. I think the bigger problem is that it took away some importance from the other characters and battles in the second and third book.
Harry Potter is completely fucking awful, though.
Really? I liked it. Yeah, it did suffer from some of the problems outlined, but that was mostly limited to the seventh book, which I won't try to offer much of a defense for. I will admit that the books did have an unfortunate tendency to end on varying degrees of deus ex machina (especially the fourth book...that "regurgitating spells" thing came straight out of nowhere), but overall I found them enjoyable enough and didn't see enough problems to consider them terrible, the seventh book aside.
Me!: I'm going to reply to your comments in the next Blog post, rather than here. Sometimes I wish we had forums for this kind of thing. =)
I don't see much of a reason for that. It's unrelated to that blog post and should really stay here. Maybe if there were a bunch of blog posts after this it'd make sense, but I think it should stay here for ease of anyone reading it. But okay, I'll reply to you over there if you insist.