The problem with story in non-book media
PostPosted:Thu Aug 15, 2013 2:15 am
Post this in gamethought even though this applies to everything like movies, anime, manga, TV, and so on.
I went back and looked at some of the articles on some of the more well-known Chinese books and usually these said books took a long time to write (measured in years). On the other hand, you can be pretty sure whoever is writing the story for a movie or a game doesn't get 5 years to just write this stuff, and he's also unlikely someone who is known for his writing ability. What usually happens is you get story that's on par with bad fanfiction, and that's not necessarily a bad thing because without bad fanfiction we'd never know how Megaman would fight Goku. The problem is that the guy who writes the bad fanfiction doesn't realize it's bad, and often most people who read it don't realize it either, either because the Emperor wears no cloths or maybe the average guy is just a lot dumber than I thought.
While I don't mind arguing about Megaman versus Goku, and I'm even willing to take Megaman's side for fun, ultimately a lot of time you have to acknowledge that whoever came up with this is dumb and that you're unlikely to be able to make anything coherent out of a dumb premise like that. I mean it's not like you're questioning if Lord of the Rings really make sense because you can be pretty sure that is probably written by someone who is not dumber than you in terms of writing ability. But to take say, the plot of Final Fantasy? Sure I can easily see it being written by someone who is much worse than me at writing. I don't know if I can do better in the same time constrain, but some of the writing is definitely pretty bad.
On a related note, I think stories in these mediums tend to be extremely bad because writers try to bite way more than they can chew. If your story has the complexity of Dragonball it is really hard to screw that up. But no we got guys writing bad fanfiction that think they're writing the Lord of the Rings. Usually these said work will have a hefty dose of ambiguity, whether it's good or evil or power levels or whatever, because the more confusing something the better it must be. Heck, Chris Metzen practically invented the 'nobody is ever evil because that is profound' school of fanfiction writing. Contrast that with say, the martial arts genre by the famous Chinese authors Gou Long and Jin Yong where it's possible to actually have an agreed list of strongest X guys in the story despite the fact that there is no universal power level system and that most of those characters never fought each other, because the story actually make sense and it's easy to see The One Who Seeks Defeat is always meant to be the strongest guy in the Jin Yong universe. Even the Hong Kong guys that randomly butcher materials from famous works don't dispute this fact!
On this note I give props to the American and even the Hong Kong guys for actually quantifying most of physical attributes in their superhero manga/comic, so that you can't just weasel out with a 'no idea how powerful anyone is'. Sure that doesn't mean the more powerful guy never loses, especially if you're dealing with Hong Kong stuff where one character famously said: "If you have to work hard to become more powerful, then you're not taking enough drugs", but at least at most instantaneous points in the story you generally have a very good idea of where everyone stands.
I went back and looked at some of the articles on some of the more well-known Chinese books and usually these said books took a long time to write (measured in years). On the other hand, you can be pretty sure whoever is writing the story for a movie or a game doesn't get 5 years to just write this stuff, and he's also unlikely someone who is known for his writing ability. What usually happens is you get story that's on par with bad fanfiction, and that's not necessarily a bad thing because without bad fanfiction we'd never know how Megaman would fight Goku. The problem is that the guy who writes the bad fanfiction doesn't realize it's bad, and often most people who read it don't realize it either, either because the Emperor wears no cloths or maybe the average guy is just a lot dumber than I thought.
While I don't mind arguing about Megaman versus Goku, and I'm even willing to take Megaman's side for fun, ultimately a lot of time you have to acknowledge that whoever came up with this is dumb and that you're unlikely to be able to make anything coherent out of a dumb premise like that. I mean it's not like you're questioning if Lord of the Rings really make sense because you can be pretty sure that is probably written by someone who is not dumber than you in terms of writing ability. But to take say, the plot of Final Fantasy? Sure I can easily see it being written by someone who is much worse than me at writing. I don't know if I can do better in the same time constrain, but some of the writing is definitely pretty bad.
On a related note, I think stories in these mediums tend to be extremely bad because writers try to bite way more than they can chew. If your story has the complexity of Dragonball it is really hard to screw that up. But no we got guys writing bad fanfiction that think they're writing the Lord of the Rings. Usually these said work will have a hefty dose of ambiguity, whether it's good or evil or power levels or whatever, because the more confusing something the better it must be. Heck, Chris Metzen practically invented the 'nobody is ever evil because that is profound' school of fanfiction writing. Contrast that with say, the martial arts genre by the famous Chinese authors Gou Long and Jin Yong where it's possible to actually have an agreed list of strongest X guys in the story despite the fact that there is no universal power level system and that most of those characters never fought each other, because the story actually make sense and it's easy to see The One Who Seeks Defeat is always meant to be the strongest guy in the Jin Yong universe. Even the Hong Kong guys that randomly butcher materials from famous works don't dispute this fact!
On this note I give props to the American and even the Hong Kong guys for actually quantifying most of physical attributes in their superhero manga/comic, so that you can't just weasel out with a 'no idea how powerful anyone is'. Sure that doesn't mean the more powerful guy never loses, especially if you're dealing with Hong Kong stuff where one character famously said: "If you have to work hard to become more powerful, then you're not taking enough drugs", but at least at most instantaneous points in the story you generally have a very good idea of where everyone stands.
