591 réponses à ce sujet

[esper]

David7204 wrote...

What happened to you happened to nobody else in the universe. It happened once, and it will never happen again. If we lived a few thousands years ago and took and guessed that all of that happened at the exact place, and the exact time, it would be miraculous.

The examples get a bit weaker as the stories get more vague, but the principle holds.

Eh... no. What happened to me was that somebody sat down and told the story. As a danish we have a writer 'Helle Helle' (who I loathe, btw, but whatever), who dedicates entire short stories to nothing other than to people having a cup of coffe.

I also read a story about a middle aged man eating a cake by another writer. Somebody may or may not having died, but the story was about someone eating a cake.

And then we have dissmissed fantasy/sciences fiction histories involving multiverse where sometimes the points is that there exist two people who has the exactly saming thing happening to them.

The extraodinaro thing abouter characthers in stories is that their stories was the one told, the author could have picked anything else, but simply didn't.

And none of this makes bittersweet ending bad writing which was the first point.

[Palipride47]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

David7204 wrote...

What stories are there that aren't about those things?

A story is quite literally simply a sequnce of events, which may or may not be fictional.  For example:


My friend had his birthday today.  He invited me out, and I joined his family for dinner.  It was a fun time, and afterward we went back to his place where he, his sister, and I watched an anime called Black Lagoon.  I just got home from this about 30 minutes ago.


I just told you a story.  It's a non-fictional one.

And one of the first things you do after coming home is pop on the BSN? And hop on a forum thread like this?

Modifié par Palipride47, 27 octobre 2012 - 08:22 .

[David7204]

The "point" of this is that a story is expected to be about something and not nothing. And it's therefore valid for the audience to expect the unlikely. Such as heroic victory.

Modifié par David7204, 27 octobre 2012 - 08:26 .

[JWvonGoethe]

esper wrote...

JWvonGoethe wrote...

Can we at least agree that, as the old saying goes, good writers are able to find the extraordinary in the ordinary?

No, a good writer is capable of stringing a series of event together so that others wants to read/her/watch them.

Point made. We disagree, though I respect your position. Let's leave it at that.

[Allan Schumacher]

David7204 wrote...

What happened to you happened to nobody else in the universe. It happened once, and it will never happen again. If we lived a few thousands years ago and took and guessed that all of that happened at the exact place, and the exact time, it would be miraculous.

If we go by this reasoning, then each of the billions of people that died to the reapers is entirely unique for each of those individuals and will never happen again.  Shepard's story ending in failure would still be unique and exceptional.  It only happened to him.


While I'm flattered that you feel my day may be unique, uncanny, unexpected, and unlikely, I will personally disagree.  I tell this story to pretty much anyone, and there's a good chance they'll be under the impression it was a pretty typical get together and that it sounds like I had a good time.

Now tell us a story about Griffons

It was my friends birthday today.  So we hopped on our Griffons and flew around Edmonton for a while, and filled up some water balloons and dive bombed the people that slighted us in the past year.  It was particularly awesome because the siblings of the griffons we were riding would go out and get us resupplies of water balloons.  Afterwards, the Griffons flew us home and high fived us, because they are awesome like that.


(This story is mostly fictional.  Mostly)

[esper]

David7204 wrote...

The "point" of this is that a story is expected to be about something and not nothing.

No it is not. There a plenty of minimalism authors who purposely writes stories about 'nothing' and claim that they are not suppossed to be understood as anything else than a story about nothing.

I have even read a story which paraprashed went something like this:
This is the beginning.
Now it is not the beginning anymore, because it is not the first line.
Now it is the middle.
Now it is nearing the ending.
Now it is the end.

(It was a little more refined than that and for an entire page, but that was how that story went).

[n7stormrunner]

stories can't be about nothing, they can seem like it but no their just really boring. to prove this I will tell a story about nothing.





did you enjoy it. do you see my point?

[David7204]

Yes, and if Mass Effect was two minutes long Shepard dying from something silly would have been perfectly fine. But since the story is 120 hours long the audience is valid in expecting a whole lot of something.

[JWvonGoethe]

This is a thread about nothing.

[David7204]

esper wrote...

David7204 wrote...

The "point" of this is that a story is expected to be about something and not nothing.

No it is not. There a plenty of minimalism authors who purposely writes stories about 'nothing' and claim that they are not suppossed to be understood as anything else than a story about nothing.

I have even read a story which paraprashed went something like this:
This is the beginning.
Now it is not the beginning anymore, because it is not the first line.
Now it is the middle.
Now it is nearing the ending.
Now it is the end.

(It was a little more refined than that and for an entire page, but that was how that story went).

And if I purchased a book and that was the story, I would have a right to be upset. I expected something and not nothing.

[esper]

n7stormrunner wrote...

stories can't be about nothing, they can seem like it but no their just really boring. to prove this I will tell a story about nothing.





did you enjoy it. do you see my point?

I never said 'nothing' is not substanceable, nor did I say it was boring. Nothing is substanceable when people tries to compress it into stories.

By make a line here




and making a line here. You made a story about nothing (because that is what you as the writer claimed, and I happened to think your story so boring to me, that I am not going to analyze it further and take you claim at face value)

[esper]

David7204 wrote...

esper wrote...

David7204 wrote...

The "point" of this is that a story is expected to be about something and not nothing.

No it is not. There a plenty of minimalism authors who purposely writes stories about 'nothing' and claim that they are not suppossed to be understood as anything else than a story about nothing.

I have even read a story which paraprashed went something like this:
This is the beginning.
Now it is not the beginning anymore, because it is not the first line.
Now it is the middle.
Now it is nearing the ending.
Now it is the end.

(It was a little more refined than that and for an entire page, but that was how that story went).

And if I purchased a book and that was the story, I would have a right to be upset. I expected something and not nothing.

I advice you not to get anything in the genre of dada-ism then (which the last was an example off). And no you did not have the right to be upset.

[n7stormrunner]

no.. I'm fairly sure it is a thread about everyone saying david is wrong... I'm also think it used be about heroics. but I could be wrong or insane... maybe a troll too

[Palipride47]

nvm.

Modifié par Palipride47, 27 octobre 2012 - 08:42 .

[Mr.BlazenGlazen]

In my opinion. RPG games like ME and DA should allow me to choose how much bittersweetness I have in a story based on the choices I make. If everything I do only leads to bittersweetness, then I feel like I had a severe lack of choice in the game.

[esper]

David7204 wrote...

Yes, and if Mass Effect was two minutes long Shepard dying from something silly would have been perfectly fine. But since the story is 120 hours long the audience is valid in expecting a whole lot of something.

And we are returning to the problem.

They got a whole lot.

And this is not mass effect, but dragon age. If you have played dragon age 2 you would know that Hawke properly wasn't a heroic hero, by most standards. And the warden certainly isn't forced to be one either. The warden got her clousure and suceeding in her goal of stopping the arch demon. For some that ending was bittersweet because off what they had to pay for reaching that goal.
Hawke was a deconstructed hero and wasn't as the legend told at all which was the whole point of the game.

[Fredward]

JWvonGoethe wrote...

Maria Caliban wrote...

A tragic hero can also have no flaw per se and simply be a victim of fate.

For example, Oedipus is the archetypical tragic hero of ancient Greece, but he never does anything wrong. He's just fated to murder his father and marry his mother, and that's that.

Good point. I was using theory of tragedy that probably dates largely from the 19th Century, or the Elizebethan age at the earliest, though would have been formulated with reference to Aristotle. This formalised idea of classical tragedy probably only exists in theory, or is applicable only to much later tragedies which deliberately sought a perfection in the ancient classical forms where there was none. It's just pretty amusing to hear people say 'no more hero deaths' or 'there are too many happy endings these days,' - it's like stepping back in time to ancient Greece.

Yes, yes you were. Which isn't what I meant. I meant tragic as in there life winds up sucking through no fault of theirs which is tragic but not really a tragic hero at all if you look at all the requirements for a "true" tragic hero. Like noble birth, hubris, punishment outweighing the crime etc. Which is outdated anyway.

[JWvonGoethe]

Foopydoopydoo wrote...

Yes, yes you were. Which isn't what I meant. I meant tragic as in there life winds up sucking through no fault of theirs which is tragic but not really a tragic hero at all if you look at all the requirements for a "true" tragic hero. Like noble birth, hubris, punishment outweighing the crime etc. Which is outdated anyway.

Just to be clear: I wasn't trying to contradict you or disagree with you in any way in my original reply to you. It was simply the case that reading your post got me thinking about whether or not Shepard fulfils the role of tragic hero (in the old fashioned sense of the term.)

Modifié par JWvonGoethe, 27 octobre 2012 - 09:12 .

[Dave of Canada]

As someone who loves bittersweet and finds the "bitter" in BioWare games to often not be accommodating to my tastes and often ends too sweet, I respectfully disagree and would type much more but I'm out of rum and in a bad mood.

Modifié par Dave of Canada, 27 octobre 2012 - 09:10 .

[Palipride47]

esper wrote...

David7204 wrote...

Yes, and if Mass Effect was two minutes long Shepard dying from something silly would have been perfectly fine. But since the story is 120 hours long the audience is valid in expecting a whole lot of something.

And we are returning to the problem.

They got a whole lot.

And this is not mass effect, but dragon age. If you have played dragon age 2 you would know that Hawke properly wasn't a heroic hero, by most standards. And the warden certainly isn't forced to be one either. The warden got her clousure and suceeding in her goal of stopping the arch demon. For some that ending was bittersweet because off what they had to pay for reaching that goal.
Hawke was a deconstructed hero and wasn't as the legend told at all which was the whole point of the game.

This is a person who has not played the Dragon Age games (and admitted to not playing any of them) complaining about an issue with ME's storytelling that he disagrees with, combined with a lot of people disagreeing with him. 

If it isn't a troll, it is a forum poster acting a lot like one. 

[Fredward]

JWvonGoethe wrote...

Foopydoopydoo wrote...

Yes, yes you were. Which isn't what I meant. I meant tragic as in there life winds up sucking through no fault of theirs which is tragic but not really a tragic hero at all if you look at all the requirements for a "true" tragic hero. Like noble birth, hubris, punishment outweighing the crime etc. Which is outdated anyway.

Just to be clear: I wasn't trying to contradict you or disagree with you in any way in my original reply to you. It was just that reading your post got me thinking about whether I thought Shepard fulfilled the role of tragic hero (in the old fashioned sense of the term.)

Yeah I realize. It's just a knee-jerk reaction to ram your point home for safety's sake here on the BSN.

[Plaintiff]

Mr.BlazenGlazen wrote...

In my opinion. RPG games like ME and DA should allow me to choose how much bittersweetness I have in a story based on the choices I make. If everything I do only leads to bittersweetness, then I feel like I had a severe lack of choice in the game.

If you drive either right or left and end up in a traffic jam regardless, does that render your power to choose irrelevent?

[Pzykozis]

n7stormrunner wrote...

stories can't be about nothing, they can seem like it but no their just really boring. to prove this I will tell a story about nothing.





did you enjoy it. do you see my point?

I'd tell you to watch Tokyo Story but then I'm fairly sure you'd just say it was boring.

Bittersweetness is good Pyrrhic victories are better, heroism is so last decade.

[Dave of Canada]

Mr.BlazenGlazen wrote...

In my opinion. RPG games like ME and DA should allow me to choose how much bittersweetness I have in a story based on the choices I make. If everything I do only leads to bittersweetness, then I feel like I had a severe lack of choice in the game.

I've heard this said many times and I can't understand why anyone would choose the "failure" path and be satisfied with it, I've chosen them many times in Origins (Killing Connor, leaving Redcliffe, wiping out the Dalish, killing Zevran, Harrowmont with Anvil) because that'd be what my character would do but it leaves the player--atleast in my case--feel like they've simply failed, rather than having done a tough decision.

Modifié par Dave of Canada, 27 octobre 2012 - 09:27 .

[Lotion Soronarr]

David7204 wrote...

* SNIP*

I disagree with your entire assesment.

You frindships and allies not mattering much in the end MADE PERFECT SENSE for ME.
I don't want any of this MLP bull**** where the magic of friendship conquers all.


Most people whined at ME3 ending because they didn't end up with the LI, and not because the ending was confusing.
They whined because they didn't get to "stick it to the enemy THEIR way".

People had expectations and were looking for the ultimate ego-boots. They didn't get it.
I for one wouldn't care if everoyne died by stray bullets in ME3, as long as the overall plot was better written.

Modifié par Lotion Soronnar, 27 octobre 2012 - 09:30 .