Doctor_Minerva

Actually I was just saying that there a lot of arguments in this thread consisting of nothing but terms codified by TV Tropes.

At this point in the thread, I can't post "I don't know what you mean" without it looking like some internet smart guy rhetorical trick, but I really don't know what you mean.

Geez, you're right. I apologize. I must have somehow thought you had gone from claiming that Wade has not made a single misstep the whole way to claiming that Wade hasn't made any "real mistakes" when you realized how absurd such a categorical denial was.

I really don't know what gave me that impression. I just feel stupid now.

It's possible I'm overlooking some bit of game lore, (I am pretty weak on redside stuff) but to the best of my recollection, prior to the SSAs, there is a single, throwaway reference to his affiliation at the end of his second arc, and that's it. The Rularuu-shin fed on magical items, so there's no real need for the Midnighters to look for further motivation, as they would be an obvious target for such a group.

Such as?

I actually do have a hard time believing that if only because what Superman did was so very similar to the confrontation for which you have excoriated Statesman.

And I just opened my copy of Watchmen. Ozymandias' gambit is going "exactly as planned" right up until the 27th page of the final issue. It actually probably is ultimately successful, because Rorschach mails the journal before he goes to Antarctica and gets the final pieces to the puzzle.

While the individual phrases may have existed , I find it hard to believe that there were arguments on the internet consisting of basically nothing of the Trope names ("There is a very fine line between a Xanatos Gambit and a Villain Sue, and Darren Wade has super-leaped across it") prior to TV Tropes.

Aye, there's the rub. Even the very best comic book stories fail by the standards being applied to these arcs. Dark Knight Returns? Sure Batman can beat Superman if he's got krytonite, missiles, twenty years to plan and if Superman has just been at the heart of a nuclear explosion. Watchmen? Oh, Ozymandius poisons a few people and attempts a plot that Venture's characters would have seen through in a moment and somehow this convinces a 4th dimensional demigod to exile himself to Mars?

Maybe some of the Astro City stories would qualify, but I consider those the very best comic stories out there, and not being as good as Astro City is hardly a critical failure in my book.

Heh. One time I was on a Manticore TF and the discussion turned to "Who would win in a fight, Batman or Manticore?" and we went back and forth before somebody suggested that Manticore would just recruit seven or eight appropriately leveled characters and get them to do the job for him.

Though I'll never respect someone who needs at least seven level 30s to take down Hopkins.

I suppose that's progress. You've been clinging to the claim that Wade hasn't made any mistakes for a long time, and it's heartening to see you move on admitting he hasn't made any real mistakes.

Is this some kind of forum game of which I am unaware? Am I supposed to take a drink every time an entry from tvtropes is misused?

That's certainly one possible explanation, but you've got a tall burden to clear before you can say that it's the only one that matters.

Clearly you don't believe the SSAs compare favorably to your own work, and not yet having experienced your arcs, that's something to which I can't comment. However, in analysis such as this, simply rejecting the reality of the the arc and substituting your own should absolutely be a last resort. "I don't like it/I would have done it differently, so it's bad writing" is not persuasive to someone who does not already share that point of view.

Take a drink.

Take a drink.


From a meta perspective, it provides foreshadowing. From a game perspective, it's what allows the Midnighters to learn of Wade's involvement:


It's not? At all? Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it's not only about writing mysteries.

Give me a moment to catch my breath. I'm worn out after chasing your goal posts. Ah...I begin to see where you are coming from.

I'm skeptical. If you didn't have a head, how would you be able to hear him telling you that you were fine?

I'm largely in agreement with a fair majority of the criticisms of the arc. Manticore is a buffoon with plot immunity and there were some specific things that Wade could not t have anticipated. Under other circumstances, I might be attacking it, assuming someone could be found to defend it.

However the two points I will dispute are Wade's plan is egregious is compared to the kind of Doctor Doom/Kang/Mordru/Batman/Cobra Commander/Deathstroke plan you find in comics all the time, and at which comics fans don't bat an eye and that the heroes were cartoonishly bad. I think they did the best they could with the intelligence and resources they could be expected to have.

I'm saying that while Wade seems to be better off in each arc, things could have gone better for him. I think you've diluted the trope to meaninglessness if you're going to define it as "Getting most of what he wants."

Maybe, maybe not.

I only ran the redside #6, so I could well be in error, but my reading of it was that the AB fragment realizes that Wade was never going to free her, gets kicked out at the last minute and takes up residence in Tyrka's body.

No. We all hate Manticore.

He didn't Synapse's power. He didn't get Numina's power. He tipped his hand by showing up in the Midnighter's mansion. He leaves enough clues that you figure out who is behind the plan. Malaise failed against Sister Psyche. Wade twice failed to kill you. He tried to double cross Tyrka and made an enemy out of an ally. Redside, he does the same thing to the PC. These are pretty trivial, sure, but he certainly didn't get everything he wanted.

Almost any form of entertainment collapses under sufficient analysis. I was watching Star Wars, one of the most beloved genre movies out there, and Princess Leia comes right out and says "Our escape was too easy. They let us go," and then nobody says anything else and they fly directly to the Rebel Base.

This is a comic book story. No, it's not even a comic book story. Right now it's 6/7ths of a comic book story, and the boards have been declaring it a failure for how long? It follows the arc of the narrative pretty closely, what with increasing successes right up until the dramatic failure at the 11th hour.

It's not like I woke up and decided to make something up about the SSAs iEX Nihlo.
It really strikes me that a lot of the criticism around here amounts to "My hero would have done X instead," with the unspoken assumption that this would have been the right thing to do, and that the writer has somehow failed by writing something else. A story is never going address every question of "Why didn't they do X instead?" Those questions are asking about matters outside the story, so to address them, the responses have to make inferences and speculate on matters implied but not stated by the story.

Most super hero teams aren't that great at what they do. I think that the animated JLA and Grant Morrison's JLA would have met those standards, but not a whole lot of others.

And Manticore messes up an awful lot and it was foolish to leave him as the sole bodyguard for Alexis, but I didn't see any egregious mistakes from anyone else. They do seem to get their act together by the end of SSA 4.By the end of the third arc, Sister Psyche asks "I'm not here to play games! Were you behind the attack on Synapse? On Numina's father?" but I don't think there's evidence that they knew there were connections before that.

I said something similar upthread, but not as well, but this ties into something that I actually kind of like about the redside/blueside arc. I like it that the heroes don't learn everything and probably never will, but that you can learn a little more of the background from the redside arcs.


Wow, if I'm disingenuous at best, I'd hate to see what you think I am at worst.

It seems like you've defined your thesis to be unfalsifiable. Wade might meet setbacks or fail to achieve his goals, but you want to limit the terms of the discussion to exclude such failures, because they are not part what you imagine his nebulously-defined finger-steepling "Exactly as Planned" Xanatos Gambit plan to be.

All sarcasm aside, it really seems like your claims can be reduced to "Leaving aside his mistakes, Wade has not made a single mistake!" and that's technically true, but by that time the argument has been reduced to meaninglessness.

You gave me a sarcastic non-answer when I said that it was foolish of Wade to show his face to the Midnighters. There are any number of possible explanations for why he did this, but the fact remains that it was done. Based on her Mercedes Sheldon's later dialogue, it does seem to tip them off to his involvement and make things more difficult for him.

I'll leave some blank space here so you can post yet another link to a sixty-year essay on writing mysteries, which, as we all know applies equally well to all media and should serve as the perfect roadmap for writing an interactive story in a 2012 online superhero game.

I think Lothic nails it here. When I design adventures for PnP RPGs, I tend to have tiers of success. I rarely kill PCs unless they really mess up, but they might not accomplish all of their goals if they're not diligent and smart.

I really like this turn of phrase, and I will be stealing it for my DC Adventures campaign, in which John is an NPC.

Oz: Let me an extend an apology of my own and explain a little bit of where I'm coming from.

Two of my favorite authors, J.R.R. Tolkien and Roger Zelazny, were very good about explaining in the context of their work how apparent mistakes in their work were not actually mistakes. Nowadays, we might call that a retcon, but they were both talented writers, and when flaws were pointed out in their narratives, they each sat down, and thought about why things would have played out the way they did.

I read them each when I was much younger and I've largely internalized this habit. So when I see something that seems to contradict something previously established in a story, I'm reluctant to call it a plot hole right away. I might look at it and say "That seems weird," but I try to accept and explain it in the context of the story. We might not have all the information, or this apparent contradiction might be a clue, or the actors in the story might have simply made a bad choice in the heat of the moment. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but it seems that you approach stories from very different assumptions, and this may be we've arrived at very different conclusions about the SSAs.

Edit: From my point of view, trying to explain "Why did things happen as they did?" is a very different question from "Why didn't things happen in another way?" and that has informed a lot of my arguments here.

By "everyone", you mean "Venture", yes?

It's possible to fail an arc, and I don't think it would make for a satisfying story, but the mechanics exist to support the option.

Perhaps I'm missing your point. So explain it to me in small words. You said that "Absolutely everything has gone according to his plan, even things he had no control over whatsoever." I pointed out that this was certainly not the case, because he by now has twice failed to kill the PC, and one can assume that this is not according his plan.

No, I'm not. I'm making a point.

Wade tried to kill the PC. He was unsuccessful.

I'm not disputing the fact that SSAs have some issues, sometimes serious ones (Issue 4 was a huge stretch with Wade knowing Psyche would swallow the Dirge, Issue 6 was a painful, padded slog), but I don't think it helps when these issues are distorted and exaggerated beyond recognition. If you're going to criticize the arcs, criticize them for what they actually contain.

Le Sigh.

Hey, so why did he show his face to the Midnighter's in SSA2? Wouldn't it have been smarter not to do it?

Really? So when he summoned the Aspect of Ruladak, it killed you and you went to the hospital and then quit the Task Force?

I don't think we have enough knowledge to assert that things have gone exactly according to his plan, as we're not privy to the details of his plan. Yes, he certainly seems better off in terms of both knowledge and power with each succeeding installment, and he's certainly getting at the very least, most of what he wants, but I think your conclusion is overbroad based on the information we have at this time.


Yes, and I'm sure the SSAs would be terrible as an interpretive dance too. Stories have to be tailored to their medium.

I largely agree with this.

My answer would be that he hasn't, as far as we know, been required to deal with something for which he hasn't planned well in advance, and plenty of people are good with long term planning, but terrible when it comes to improvisation. Or he might have tunnel vision and can't see beyond the REAL ULTIMATE POWER waiting for him at the end of his plot. I do think the Darren Wade as a wheels-within-wheels mastermind is largely a construct of the forums, and it's not as well supported by the stories as it is around here, and Darren Wade failing to take something he couldn't predict into account doesn't contradict what has been established.