Note: Long wall of text ahead. During the course of it, I am occasionally rude, amicable, and apathetic. It should also be noted that I've had more shots tonight with the crew than I have years on this planet. I'm 22. You figure that one out. So yeah. Hopefully this makes sense. Now if you excuse me, I've been guzzling water for the past half hour, so I feel as if I can finally go to be. I have to be on set in 6 hours.
Just don't open if you don't care. Especially if you don't want to see me try to argue several different points while inebriated.
I think I do a good job.
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@Monkey:
You HAVE no point here. You are well off topic and it's amazing to me that you seem to think your fluffy art philosophy that you are never going to bring up when not convenient for you has anything to do with anything.
People want to talk about what might make a good direction for the story and what might not, and all you have to say to this is some collegiate nihilism mixed with naive author worship.
You're telling the people in the discussion forum to not discuss.
Now.
Only right now, because lord knows you bitch about this and that in OP yourself plenty.
I have to ask: are you an idiot? Do you know how to read? Can you comprehend my words without putting others in my mouth? I am honestly concerned. Not once did any of that ever come out of my mouth.
My point is: you're a narcissistic imbecile who thinks he's so much better than everyone else. That anyone with a different opinion is beneath you. You treat people who have not earned your respect like crap, and when you're on the failing side of an argument you twist people's words and change the entire point. You accuse me of not being on topic when I was only responding to a thread already started. You continued the discussion. You're continuing it now. You are just as guilty as I.
You brought fluffy art philosophy into this. And even when I agreed with you you dismissed my remarks. You are as bad as the Texas Senate.
Not once did I ever tell people that they can't discuss. I've participated in this discussion myself. I love discussion. All I said was if Oda chooses to do something it doesn't make it a mistake just because you think it does. There is still plenty to discuss. Well, is it good or bad writing? What does this mean for where the story is going? Not once did I ever limit the discussion.
You grabbed a post some hotheaded nobody made in a rash of random anger at people discussing a story. And then decided to both champion this and run off to nowhere with it. Leaving the thread far behind.
Note, this is what I mean when I refer to you as narcissistic. And what I decided to do was get into an argument with you, frankly because I'm kind of tired of the way you treat some members around here. Unnecessary, sure, but you're just as guilty of steering this thread as I; you could have just ignored me after all.
I mean, the only reason you responded to me was to criticize and belittle my points, no? You've not once been interested in an actual discussion have you? If you have you wouldn't be trying to belittle me at every turn, would you? And before we let slip the cry of hypocrisy, I am not perfect. I've had a marginal amount of drinks with the crew tonight, and I'm kind of done trying for any actual discussion.
See, in the Second Round Discussion thread, we had an actual discussion without belittling and name calling, but I'm sure if you were over there, that would not have lasted or been nearly as fun.
But I'm digressing, aren't I? Oh, back to the point if I must.
You are doing the opposite of a critical argument lol. And WHAT theory? Thew theory of "don't question author intention ever :)"?
Have you ever taking a critical interpretation and analysis class? Even if you haven't, you know exactly what I'm talking about. There are many different critical theories to analysis, I support this one in particular. The one where you critique a story (or art in general) on how the author (artist) choose to create it not how you think it should have been done. That's the whole point of my argument. (Or this portion of it because shit's about to get crazy.)
All of that except I never bothered to send any to companies. And man oh man does none of that show in you.
Trust me, you do not want me writing like I do for screenplays. That's just dull. Lotsa dialogue. Tends to run long too.
Also, I don't see why I need to bring my professional self to a forum about a children's manga where I come to shoot the shit with fans of things I like. It should be needless to say, but my writer's voice, and my normal voice, are quite different.
And OF COURSE it's a workshop where people discuss and throw around theories.
Yet having apparently gone through this, you insist on guidelines and rulebooks in a way a 14 year old might. With wonder that someone could go beyond basic cliches.
And you call this "mistakes" for no readily apparent reason, aside from confusing poor Wolfwood.
Have you ever read "Story" by Robert McKee. It's the exact opposite of what "Save the Cat." What I call "Rules," he calls "Principles." And while I only ran with mistakes because that was the term used in the original post by Champ (and I have voiced my regret about being stuck with that term) these aren't arbitrary things I have created. These things exist and are prominent throughout storytelling and they have been for ages.
And of course people can go "beyond basic cliches" my first post listed three examples I'm fond of. You're not saying anything I already haven't.
None of them taught me jack shit regarding that lol. Some of the stupid text books covered the inane basic basics of "QUEST SOTRY", "COMEDY", "TRAGDY". But we were respected enough to assume that the concept of tropes and cliches were understood by the point of college.
See, the best professor I ever had drilled one concept into our heads: in order to break the rules, you had to know the rules. He said, you were never going to write anything great unless you broke the rules, but you can just do it arbitrarily. And he continued, with something I've always held onto: "if you do you're job right, your audience is going to think you're doing it wrong. At least, at first." And then he spent 3 hours making sure our foundation as writer's was rock-solid–that we knew and understood the rules well enough to know how to break them. That was the first day of what would be a very excellent class in an incredible first semester.
Apparently, we had very different teachers. Even in the advanced poetry class I took, we spent the first part of the semester making sure we knew the rules of the various meters, that we could write a sonnet or a sapphic poem before we were allowed to break the rules of poetry.
But I'm digressing again. This tends to happen when I reach shot number 10. And I went about a lot beyond that tonight. Thank the lord for spellcheck, eh?
Did you take script classes from a how to draw book??
If David Simon was in any of my classes and turned that script in, and anyone had said "hey why did you kill Omar like that", David Simon would have sat and explained why David Simon did that (something about his romantic-violent image catching up to him, or I dunno, NOTHING in the Wire save Stringer's end being showy). And no one would have run their mouth talking about RULES.
First off, Bodie's end was showy. Second off, you seem to be missing my point. One of the reasons The Wire was so successful, was because it was constantly breaking the Rules of how TV is supposed to go, in was that even the Sopranos didn't. (But then again, HBO has always been home to groundbreaking television.) But still, even Omar's death was different from how the show had handled it. And, as a viewer, even though you're used to the way this show has done things, you still never expect Omar to get got like it's nothing. I mean, he was The King. He survived ridiculousness, and then that's what got him? And the reason it works so well is because you just don't do that.
But that doesn't change the fact that if this wasn't an already established show going into its endgame, and editor along the lines would have stopped him and said (whoa man, you can't do that.) That's just how the business works.
Pretty sure people grasp that one in high school. And hey my classes let shit be natural. I the script had something that caused a reaction like "what??" during the reading, people got a chance to give criticism, the author could defend. The teacher would weigh in etc.
It is honestly surprising to me that none of your creative writing teachers ever seemed to harp on the basic rules of storytelling. But hey, that's your school system.
You're making the mistake that I think this is elite knowledge. QUITE the opposite. It's COMMON. Should be common sense!
But time after time we get people here ascribing god like powers to Oda, acting like there is no way to possibly understand and examine how One Piece works and what might cause issues.
To use an analogy, it's like cavemen encountering a car and calling it MAGIC, and refusing to hear that there's a complex engine underneath that makes it run.
I have no idea why YOU are exhibiting that short of attitude toward authors, but you seem to be doing so!
I do believe that an author is the god of whatever word they created. After all they have given it life, they have put things in motion, they alone control its fate. Does that make the author infallible? No. And I never implied that it did. However, it does make the author free from accusations of making a mistake. Does that make them free from criticism? No, and I have explicitly stated so time and time again.
Yes, and your argument is that this reasoning is full proof and infalliable, and we are not to question it. Which I damn well know I haven't said, and never will.
Oh, and that reason could be something like "Oh shit, this story kind of grew faster than I though, I need to wrap this up before things get too long, damn I won't have time to play out that one plotline. Fuck."
You're lucky we're talking about a guy who generally has his shit together. If we were talking Naruto, mamma mia.
I'm really not doing anything more controversial than treating Oda like a human being here.
Also lol at your anger at being "misunderstood" when multiple people are expressing confusion at what exactly you're trying to say.
My anger is at you stating my own points back at me like I haven't heard of them. The confusion lies in the usage of the term mistake. If you like I can rewrite all my arguments not using that word. Once again: bed, made, laying in it.
And I never said you can't question it. I've said time and time again that you can! All I'm saying is that just because you don't agree with it can you accuse Oda of having made a mistake with the story. If he is telling the story he wants to tell the way he wants to tell it, then it's all correct. That doesn't make it perfect, that doesn't make him perfect. I feel like I've said this blatantly a million times by now, but you keep not getting it.
They're nothing so sacred. People are people, simple types of plots appeal to lots of people. And people haven't changed fundamentally since the old Greeks. So people still enjoy seeing boys and girls kiss, fat guys farting, and dudes with big ambitions die. People just enjoy this shit, and so authors keep telling it. It's not some DEVELOPED AND PASSED DOWN IN THE DEEP ANCIENT VAULTS OF NARRATIVE shit. People like sex jokes, because we like sex and laughing. And 3000 years hasn't changed that.
But people, some people anyway, enjoy seeing something different too. Getting something fresh, getting something interesting. So you see people try out new things, or rarer seen things. To see if it makes whatever the point they're making their story for WORK any better.
Did you ever get told that? To have a clear idea of what you're trying to say and do?
Once again, this is my argument. That breaking those archetypes, breaking the rules, making a "mistake" in the telling of a traditional story, leads to some of storytelling's most iconic moments. And it's these works that break form the formula and do it successfully that persist along with the traditional story throughout time, while all other works fade away. Think of the stories you read in a literature class, now think off the numerous other books published in the same years as those.
Two types of stories live on throughout history: those that tell the traditional, archetypal story (on which the rules of writing are based) well, and those that break the rules and do it well. The rest fade into obscurity. The Dean Koontz of their time.
Do you actually imagine established authors/writers look at big lists of rules? And then consciously decide to break them?
No, but I know from reading memoirs by said authors, that they know the rules well, they're ingrained in their being, and they know how to break them.
Wait wait wait wait.
You didn't take any history of theater or literature did you, during all that script shit you say you did.
Well, my minor is in Classical Studies which means I specialized in Greco-Roman history, studied classical literature, took Latin, and got to spend a summer in Italy. Oh and when I go to grad school, that's going to be my focus, so…
And before you ask "why is a film student a class. studies minor?" Because I love Greco-Roman history and I had a lot of AP credit.
You wanna talk about "ANCIENT rules" and yet you apparently deny the one on the right.
There's a difference here though. Mainly that Breaking Bad is a Black Comedy. Even in it's darkest episodes it still is able to be humorous. And, more than anything, it's a Western.
Wait, now I'm no expert on Song of Fire and Ice, but the Red Wedding damn well didn't wipe out 95% of anybody.
And high body counts are nothing new. Hamlet just about covers the stage in them.
The Red Wedding eliminated the entirety of the Northern Army. With it, the Starks, the only "good" house, who weren't even fighting to conquer the Kingdom, where all but eliminated. One was already being corrupted, and the others taken out of the country. So yeah, it kind of killed all the good guys.
And yeah, but Hamlet did it at the end. That's what makes Martin's move so crazy. The fact that it happens at the end of a season in the show doesn't really show how early it happens in the book, and in the story as a whole.
TRAGEDIES HAPPENED ALL THE TIME SINCE FOREVER. LOL
Not even the point.
You have like never looked at any Ancient Greek plays have you. Just like now, and in between half of the damn things are tragedies.
Yeah, and tragedies follow a blueprint don't they? Kind of helping my point here.
My dad is a High School English teacher. I'm trying to find a synonym for "yes" that illustrates more than you could possibly imagine.
Hey cool, so is mine. And my mom teaches music. Granted they're forced to teach in Texas…
And oh, by the way, rhetorical questions don't need answers. Obviously you'd taken one.
Oh yeah that Jung bullshit about shared subconscious stories. It's bullshit.
Unless you're talking about the really obvious fact that these types of stories (like I said earlier) come straight up out the ground of natural human conflicts and relations we all end up having or seeing, and are therefore interesting to us. What is Breaking Bad at the end of the day? It's a midlife crisis taken to a crazy extreme.
What is The Wire? The story of all the bits and pieces running in the American cities we see all the time.
If a baby was raised by wolves and was retrieved from the woods at age 18 he probably wouldn't relate to much of any story!
Or because people come of age themselves, have big ambitions, have antipathy toward authoritarian regimes, like the comforting thought of magic spirituality, have daddy issues, enjoy seeing places that are exotic compared to their mundane everyday surroundings etc.
IS that what you're trying to say? Because it sounds like you're invoking that Jung crap, but again maybe I'm wrong this time.
You're wrong this time. I've been saying everything you just said back to me. That is why archetypes exist. You probably learned that in sixth grade.
When the heck did Shakespeare ever write a hero's journey story. Henry V??
Every story, in the end, is going to be some variation of the Hero's Journey, that's kind of the point. And now, if you'll allow me to quote the man I'm working for currently, as he breaks it down the best:
- . A character is in a zone of comfort,
- . But they want something.
- . They enter an unfamiliar situation,
- . Adapt to it,
- . Get what they wanted,
- . Pay a heavy price for it,
- . Then return to their familiar situation,
- . Having changed.
That is the Hero's Journey boiled down into 8 "steps," to its most base level by Dan Harmon.
I'm sure it's easy to see how Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet follow that structure, with the variations on it at the end of their tales, that make Shakespeare's work endure, despite most of it being trite.
I know more about Shakespeare than you could hope to imagine, and more than I could hope to avoid (I even drove past Othello's tower!!!).
Oh boy, back with the narcissism.
Aside from the Histories I know the man. And uh, OF COURSE you would include Shakespeare. All of his plots have really obvious appeal, the only thing that ever turns him into some "challenging" experience is the language. With the exception being maybe The Tempest. Which may or may not be some sort of meta statement on being an old author.
I really don't know what you're trying to get at here. That obvious appeal is why I included him in my list.
Just because I don't like it, still means I think it's wrong.
Um, are you missing a word here? This phrasing just sounds odd to me.
Now see I have a reason I think that. Perhaps you'd like to actually argue THAT, it may or may not change my mind. And maybe Oda will pull it off, or maybe he'll let me down like he did with Fishman Island. Because guess what, that IS what matters. If you don't understand that then you didn't really understand anything you just wrote. Something I have a sneaking suspicion about.
It mostly just sounds like you're regurgitating stuff you were never able to digest.
We've already argued this. It went nowhere. Mainly because you're too stubborn to change your mind on anything. You are set in your belief that t would be bad writing if Oda had Doffy beat now. Nothing anyone here says will change your mind. I'm pretty sure that's obvious to everyone.
But besides, if he lets you down, that's you being disappointed with the direction he took the story, not him making a mistake in telling his story. [/hide]