God-fucking-
damn all of you people for turning my initial post with bare-bones details of concept characters into a multi-party debate on sci-fi conventions and stuff... just when I had a working idea for the goddamn
War on Orphans story worked out too!
Except you, Heretic. I think you're adorable. Chinese Clone Cops in Cambodia with Cleats.
PREGRIN wrote:Well, not with me. I honestly find Archwind one of the least interesting Comixverse characters, he's a total superhero-by-numbers except for the unusual name (again, surface detail) and his background as an alien abductee which rarely figures into the story at hand.
He was never abducted by aliens, his backstory also directly relates to Mogar's background info too in that Patrick Peck was direct effected by a god-killing celestial weapon used by Mogar eons ago.
Frankly, that kind of one-dimensional static hero who's a righteous and upstanding good person all the time is just unrealistic. Who the hell is actually like that? All of us have our skeletons in our closet and our shadow sides, personality traits that quite a few would with good reason proclaim something not to be proud of. Hell, that kind of omnipotence isn't even necessarily a motivation to do good because as a matter of fact that makes it relatively difficult to be punished and increasingly difficult to relate to normal people who are more vulnerable to everything because as time goes on you forget more and more of... Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons showed in Watchmen with Doctor Manhattan what would realistically happen to a human empowered with that kind of omnipotence.
A squeaky-clean cardboard good guy like Archwind is as difficult to relate to as Snidely Whiplash. Nobody's a hero or a villain all the time. On occasions we rise or fall to that level.
Maybe that kind of cardboard characters can be fun out of a sense of nostalgia for when we were kids and watched cartoons or read "boys' own adventure" books about the adventures of such characters, but it's unrealistic characterization nonetheless. Find a historical figure who's seen as a hero today and enough information survives about, and you'll be able to dig up some dirt on him or her. Similar with people seen as villains.
That's why Archwind's powers developed over the course of
years and in that time, his cumulative life experience and his metahuman development gradually made him the way he is? As for skeletons in his closet, I think there could've been times where Archwind turned bad people into greasy smears in his fists and those could count as liquified skeletons in his closet. There is the fact that he's partly retired and wearied after decades of servitude.
I have discussed with others, like FROD, the story of Archwind because the original Archwind article is horrendously outdated - no different from your Theo article in that it was written in an entirely different
era of Comix where things were much simpler - and I've already some ideas on new directions to take Archwind, new directions that will stay true to his essential spirit.
Why do we (you) equate "sophisticated" or "original" with works that feature characters that are all neurotic? For a person who originally started this discussion with cries of misogyny, you should be the first person to notice that practically everyone in Watchmen is riddled with psychosexual issues in that one of them thinks every woman is a whore, another one shoots pregnant ladies to death, another one is effectively asexual (Ozymandias), another one is an unfaithful glow-in-the-dark partner, and the only single female character in the story has a backstory in which she is essentially a prostitute with a prostitute for a mother and I don't think it would be far fetched to say that Silk Specter I's mother was also a prostitute.
So it is more realistic to bestow great powers to monumental assholes and psychos? Why is it not realistic to depict great powers being bestowed to a fundamentally good person? Is it now unoriginal and stupid and lame to be optimistic because 1980s cynicism is all the rage now?
If that is the case, then I guess the world would be better off idolizing serial rapists and killers rather than Ghandi or Franklin D. Roosevelt or Martin Luther King or Nelson Shroomdela. Of course, none of these persons are perfect, but they did nonetheless dedicate vast majority of their life trying to do good in the world rather than monologue in black-and-white panels over WHORESWHORESWHORES-THECITY-WILL-FLOOD-WITH-EXCREMENT-AND-THE-PEOPLE-WILL-CRYOUT-SAVE-US-AND-I'LL-WHISPER-NEIN!
In short, Archwind is a first/second generation Comix characters and like a lot of characters, he too will need considerable revamping. But I find nothing wrong or unoriginal in the portrayal of a fundamentally good and moral person given great powers. But if you prefer fundamentally doubleplus ungood and immoral persons with great powers... then that's a matter of personal preferences.
Also, of course, the assumes that there is absolutely no dirt in Archwind and that he never once did anything bad is a very absolutist and blackwhite fallacy.
Sounds like a cool and funny idea for a story. I suggest that the supervillain getting involved could be that guy you've thrown around a bit. You know, that wannabe supervillain dude who does everything from his backyard mostly as a bit of family-friendly sociopathic fun, and probably has a modified garden shed for a lair. That'd tie very much into the whole thing being a glorified school project, you know happening on the same scale...
Hell, Dr. Horrible Jr. might actually do that
because he lost to Anton and Nick in the contest to select a glorified school project. REVENGEANCE!
You said something about how in order to draw more female contributors we'd have to retool it into a horror forum, yet horror was a male-oriented genre too until Anne Rice arrived on the scene and got popular. Similar thing with fantasy and Ursula LeGuin.
PREGRIN. Twilight, the movie at least, had the least amount of suspense and the vast majority of its focus was that of some hokey teen angst drama and there was nothing scary in it at all and no attempt at fright at all, but with all the technical production dedicated to making it as fangirl swoony. I am surprise that you can confuse Twilight for horror when it is very obviously a (terrible) teenage romance drama.
But maybe this was the revolutionary new take on the much-maligned horror genre that we've all been waiting for.
MOBUS wrote:Wrong. As Shroom has pointed out, Watchmen's so over the top in the character neuroses that the entire 'REAL CHARACTERS GUYS" meme strains credulity. Every single character in Watchmen is fucked up beyond relief. No is realistic in that story at all. Manhatten is a pushover. Ozymandias is a megalomaniac. Dreiburg is a fat nerd who has the tools to live out his childood fantasies and can only GET IT UP when out superheroing.
Writing sociopathic killers, rapists, impotent internet permavirgin fatties, misogynistic vigilantes, glow-in-the-dark asocial fuckups who's apathetic enough to get millions killed, and a single female prostitute whose mother was a prostitute and whose grandfather was a prostitute is all the rage right now, Moby.
Writing well-adapted people just trying to do the moral thing is unrealistic because there are never ever any well-adapted people trying to do the moral thing in our grimdark monochromatic blackwhite world where horrible monologues by Josh Hartnett as he kills bitches is the state of the
real world in which we live in, makes you give it a cry... FUCK AND LET DIE! WHORES-WHORES-WHORES... WHORES-WHORES-WHORES... WHORES-WHORES! What does it matter to ya when you got a whore to do, YOU GOTTA SHOOT HER AND HER UNBORN CHILD WELL!
WHORES-WHORES-WHORES... WHORES-WHORES-WHORES... WHORES-WHORES! When you were young and your heart was a bleeding breast...
Okay, I will stop now.
PREGRIN wrote:A space opera not using laser weapons, teleporters or extraterrestrial life and muting sound in space in order to make it more believable doesn't avoid clichés? And a TV series with a complex plot that leaves it up to the viewer who's the good guys and who's the bad guys, indeed whether it's even possible to make such a division, instead of picking a side isn't more thematically complex than say Star Trek or X-Files?
A space opera with enemy robots, a plucky ragtag fleet, a very big and fat blonde Mary Sue character, obvious attempts at soap-boxing current events and issues, and lots and lots of religio-mythological bullshitification to move its story forward too.
Do you even regularly follow nBSG or are you speaking of something that you don't often (or at all) watch? Also, I think Moby watches nBSG regularly. Maybe. Moby?
Well, maybe you've used those tropes in a flexible way in your worldbuilding so that they're easy to play around with for other writers... there's been a lot of other generic space opera verses here, and I actually have to admit that if yours attract more writers than theirs then you're likely doing something right they aren't. I dunno, maybe a lot of creativity is unconscious and you can transcend clichés without really thinking about it. Again, it's possible that I should think more about distinguishing between clichés and archetypes.
Maybe you should not take other fellow writers for granted and automatically assume that they're all automatically unimaginative drones who by themselves are incapable of doing things flexibly and imaginatively for their own entertainment?
I don't know. That might rub other people the wrong way. Maybe. Perhaps. Quite possibly. Mayhaps.
Guess what, that kind of dysfunctional people exist in real life and until the 1970s and 1980s it was rare to portray superheroes as straying very far from the accepted American norm of a good up-standing citizen... well, most normal and well-functioning people don't become vigilantes either, let alone ones dressing as giant owls or Egyptian gods when they go about their business.
What if I want to make a statement about how morally good people, empowered with great abilities, can make and affect positive change onthe world as a realistic and non-cynical extrapolation of superheroism? What if I do it without dumb green rocks, perpetually bald sociopaths, or marrying Jimmy Olsen to gorillas or having him and Aquaman die in a desert or belittling both Lana Lang and Lois Lane for being morons? What if I do it in a way that attempts to be very comprehensive and very well-integrated and integral with the framework of our fictional world?
MOBUS wrote:And people can relate to the average Per character?
Zing.
PREGRIN wrote:Well, I think it's easier to relate to Louise and Karl who are basically still normal people with limitations than to a physically and ethically near-omnipotent demigod. It's easier for someone like Archwind to triumph - physically or ethically - than for someone like Miss Exner, so there's potentially more invested in the conflict.
Then you better write Louise and Karl as basically still normal limitations.
Also, this is why I haven't been able to write Archwind engaging in weekly superhuman battles with supervillains ever since FROD decided to turn our main metas into one-man city-wrecking leviathans. But Archwind reached this level relatively late in his career and one of the central aspects of his character, which was also written in the main profile, is that he only became immensely powerful after
years and years of ordeal and he only became an icon for metahumanity worldwide after that ordeal as well. He started off with powers like Golden Age Superman, even unable to fly.
I can't believe I'm agreeing with FROD here, but Archwind has long since "transcended" (oooh) the basic "superhero smash supervillain" archetype. Now it's going to be difficult to write a character who is supposed to tackle big, intangible, societal things and shit... but that's actually something FROD would consider a positive thing, in that it's a challenge for both the character and a writer. Since I'm a shmuck, I actually hate FROD forever (just kidding FROD, I love you) for making weekly battles between Archwind and Man-Law an impossibility and for giving Archwind a role more akin to... the Nelson Mandela of Metahumans or something. Woah.
Oh, right. There are limitations for Archwind. Physical ones and ethical ones for a "nigh-omnipotent" demigod. For example, when Archwind is forced to come to blows with an equal in power, or even one who is below him. How on Earth would he do it without incurring casualties that potentially number in the
thousands?
The thing that FROD wanted for Archwind that I now agree with is that he's not just some cheapo Superman knockoff anymore. He's become a pillar and cornerstone in the Comix world, he's the metaphorical Atlas with the whole world on his shoulders. That's gonna be damn hard to write, though. But there it is.
Maybe that's not a terribly original concept, but still more nuanced and closer to what actual people are like than Archwind.
Nuanced? Closer to actual people? Yeah, it may have more pseudophilopsychosophical whatnots with Infra and all... but as far as nuanced and stuff goes, I actually have to think long and hard for the Comix-verse global ramifications of the Archwind character. He is
not just Big Blue with Cape and "S" on His Chest Thwarts Lex Luthor.
Ever wonder why Indiana Jones is more popular than Doc Savage even though both characters belong to the "scholar who's also an action hero" archetype? That's right, it's easier to believe that someone like Indiana Jones would actually exist than someone like Doc Savage would actually exist.
Cockily making some smug remark while chucking people into plane engines or shit and spending the entire story going through narrow-escape after narrow-escape and miraculous chase sequence after chase sequence while bedding the girls who always start off hating him, while cracking his whip and stuff?
Um, maybe you're discounting the fact that Indiana Jones was portrayed by Harrison Ford - who happens to be an iconic character - while Doc Savage was just a comic book character? Oh yeah, I also said in our conversations that cliches/tropes/conversations also depended very much on how the individual performer does it and that each take is different precisely because it's a work created by an individual or groups of individuals.
Notice the scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark where it's like a sword duel is about to start and Indy just shoots the guy with the sword instead of engaging in a knife fight, or the scene where the Gestapo officer draws an ominous-looking device we think is a torture instrument and then it turns out to be a coathanger.
Oh. Now I get it. Those scenes were written because they are meant to be funny and because Harrison Ford had the shits and could not clench his sphincter long enough to act in an elaborate swordfight scene... but because those scenes are meant to be funny.
Geeze. By "avoiding" or "subverting" cliches you actually just mean "having a sense of humor" and by being "entertaining" and "having fun and a good time" and stuff. Geeze.
I think people naturally do these things because these things are obviously fun and because humor is a renewable resource. I don't think Spielberg and Lucas actually thought really hard about subverting genres and creating groundbreaking works and I think their biggest goal was just to "have the funnest and wildest damn time" ever. Dunno, that just seems obvious because I honestly can see where guys like Spielberg and Lucas are coming from when they want wild good jolly awesome fun and when they want to entertain people.
I dunno, maybe a lot of creativity is unconscious and you can transcend clichés without really thinking about it.
Um, it's because each writer/movie maker/actor/artist/whatever is an individual person and naturally adds individual touches to any particular work (that uses any particular cliche) that's being worked on? If a maker makes a very derived and unoriginal and shit effort, then it's probably because that maker really doesn't have much "soul" in him or individualisticness or is really dull. Because, um, I personally like to add individual touches to all sorts of things and my works are heavily shaped by my personality and I think this applies to almost everyone?
I mean, geeze, this is a
natural aspect of telling fiction. Hell, with facts as well.
People add
their own touches to
their own works because they've got things like personalities and individual idiosyncracies? who knew lol amirite?
The people who make very deriviative works are either very unimaginative and lacking in personality and can't conceive much aside from just a couple of paragraphs of text (cough) or are probably very confused or something, or at an early developmental stage and have not really figured things out within themselves... or all of the above.