SuperOz

No problem. I hope the next SSA raises the bar from where we are now because even with you disagreeing with me, you're picking out a lot of problems yourself in this story.



S.

Well, I come from a bit of a different background in that regard. I have wrote and continue to write a fair amount of fiction, and this year is my thirty-first as a tabletop RPG player and game master. On top of that, I went to university to study filmmaking in all of its aspects. Unfortunately, I was a generation too early to take full advantage of digital filmmaking, so I make up for it now with little clips and such I like putting up on Youtube. I only wish I was as prolific as Samuraiko.

So what this all ultimately informs my opinions about are pretty much the basics. The absolute first rule I learned about filmmaking is that what you put up on screen is going to be everything that the audience will see. If you're a particularly gifted person (say like Christopher Nolan or Alfred Hitchcock) you can play with those expectations and encourage the audience to think, but again you have to have the material for them to work with to begin with.

Often I'll watch a film or read a piece of work or in this case even play a game with one eye giving things a bit of a critical viewing. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. If the author of the piece is willing to come forward and not only accept the criticism and explain themselves, that to me is not only the mark of a strong writer, but a strong and honest person that's willing to re-examine their own work.

What I'm not going to do is become an apologist or a rationaliser of a piece of work. That's not my job as an 'audience member'. It shouldn't be because it's not my work to do so with. If however I do encounter something that either doesn't seem logical from what I know of the story, and it doesn't seem continuous and internally consistent, it's going to ring alarm bells. Again, it's not my job to make those things work, but I think it's handwaving to just trust in the writers beyond a certain point.

What I wrote before about suspension of disbelief holds for me with most of everything. One of my earliest memories where I applied it was when I watched The Phantom Menace with what I thought was a great villain in Darth Maul. Vicious, deadly, intelligent. And at the climax of the movie, he has young Obi-Wan at his mercy and toys with him. And then...for no reason I could see, he actively notices Obi-Wan calling his lightsaber to him and then watches (seemingly helplessly) as he vaults over his head and cuts him in half without so much as a raised weapon.

I was incredulous. How could this fantastic warrior and bad guy just...take it? My suspension of disbelief was shattered. The story seemingly dictated that all of Maul's previous actions didn't mean anything or have consequence in that one crucial moment.

And so, to my mind, that has been what's been and seemingly continues to occur in this story. I'm jarred out of the story by things I find illogical and discontinuous. Yes, I've been selective in what I consider continuous charactersisations of the characters, but again I feel I've had to because they've been so discontinuous. I can choose to look at these characters and take what I'd consider to be the worst possible viewpoint of them (and if that's the case, why am I interested in what happens to them at all) or I can take the most positive view I can manage. Yes, it's a form of rationalisation, but that's born out of necessity not preference.

So that's where I come from. I'm going to take things at face value and rightly so. If you're going to sell me a story, sell me a story. And with one chapter to go, it's leaving a lot to try and reconcile and explain, in my mind.



S.

And you're Arbiter Reasonable, I presume. Excuse me officer..... Relax, I've moved on.



S.

No, not really. And I suspect you're just trolling, so...well, foolish me. I fed the troll. Hope that sustains you for the weekend.


S.

You know, I paused to read this and I just shook my head increduously. You still want to 'win' some intangible point that I just don't get.

You're just doing circular arguments now, that effectively echo everything I said about you, but no...you have to try and make it about me. That's honestly really weak, by any standards. And now you say I'm taking it personally. The only thing I take personally is someone trying to weasel justifications out of an argument that they feel the moral high ground in.

Enough already. You're already proving you can't let things go, and the only reason I'm responding here now is to tell you to cut it out and that I'm putting you on ignore. This story and these kinds of circular arguments where for at least your part you want to force the concession or whatever the heck it is you want are fruitless and embarassing.

Like I said, go peddle this somewhere else, because noone's listening anymore.



S.

Oh come on! Seriously? You come out and say I'm interpreting facts and what do you do? YOU SPECULATE in the same manner you accuse me of doing! You're not even trying to debate a point here, you're deliberately being argumentative and speculative without anything to support your argument. I cited the direct points from the story and what was said without assumption. Unless you are then going to argue that I shouldn't take what's being said at face value for interpretation's sake? You're literally chasing your own tail here.


I'm sorry, but you just proved the opposite. Statesman is going to go straight for Wade when he finds out he's behind all of this, which is what he does. How else does he know where to go to confront him? How else does he know to call him by name? Are you seriously putting up a strawman argument just to argue at this point? Every time you say something isn't so, you then add something that says it is. This isn't speculation, this isn't wild rampant unfounded guesswork, this is what is on screen, in text. And then, and THEN, you speculate, unfounded, with absolutely no evidence to support you, that Wade engineers the gathering of said information.



Are you being truly disingenuous here? The Circle of Thorns ring any bells? Those guys who live under the city and practice arcane and ancient rituals going back thousands of years? The Mu? The Midnighters? How many magical factions with established long histories would you like me to cite here that have every reasonable ability and resource to do this?

Again, you're basing your entire supposition about Wade on the notion that 'noone has done this before' when it's clear that they have. Wade's information is based on something that happened a thousand years ago. This is not his original work. This is not his original ritual. SOMEONE ELSE DID IT. Which means entirely reasonably that someone else could have that information.


OH COME ON. This is getting beyond facetious. You're not even using any supported facts or anything now, you're just saying 'it's the kind of thing that happens from time to time' and that is your defence of that point? I wasn't even referring to the player character, I'm referring to Statesman. You're very conveniently avoiding the point and the assertion and trying to make another which fits the interpretation that you personally want to attribute to it without once, and I have given you every opportunity and even have gone so far as to put forward a supported argument, doing the same. Not once.

You're even arguing that despite the fact that Statesman turns up, knowing who Wade is and what he's done and somehow doesn't know from either conferring with Synapse or the player character or even the Midnighters (which are all totally reasonable given the situation of the attacks) is reasonable? Does this entire situation happen in a vacuum? Does this happen in some way that the characters involved are totally unaware (considering there is media coverage from the redside arcs) of events transpiring around them?

I'm seriously done with this. You keep pulling out this strawman argument along with doing precisely what you accuse me of doing, which is randomly speculating as to what the character is doing. 'Delving into his past was secondary?' HOW DO YOU KNOW THIS? Give me PROOF. Give me supporting evidence in the text that supports this theory. I gave mine. PONY UP.

So based on that, he's not involved. At all. Is that what you're saying?

Minerva, I've argued better topics with high school students. For every supposed point you put forward, you either contradict yourself or actively avoid and cherry pick what you think you can actively argue either because you can't, or because you think some alternative avenue will prove you right.

I refute you and counter-argue and all I get is this waffle that you don't quote, you don't support and most importantly, you assume and grossly so to try and prove your point. You make assumptions based on nothing that we see occur and argue that is somehow a salient and relevant point. I have, and would continue (but I see now it's becoming pointless) on what's seen and follow that through to a logical and consistent conclusion.

You choose to not do and even just actively dodge and weave without any supportive evidence. Unless you want to pony up as I said before, then I'm really seriously done talking to you.


EDIT: You know, I actually am done talking to you. I just went back to look at the post you responded to and you used approximately what....ten or fifteen percent of what I wrote to deliberately cherry-pick what you thought you could somehow make a point of. You don't want to argue in any reasonable fashion. You don't want to do anything but play in a sandbox where story events happen in a vacuum, characterisation hinges on your personal bias from post to post, story logic and internal consistency also happen in a vacuum and unsupported assertions about characters are entirely valid arguments.

You can reply if you want, but it's painfully achingly clear you don't want to do anything other than to cling to what you have. I was more than willing to be refuted and challenged. I was challenged, but the conditions for that were entirely those of your own preference. I'm done here.




S.

Nope. What I'm arguing for is reasonable suspension of disbelief. Reasonable suspension of disbelief is to say 'Statesman is overwrought over losing his daughter and he's not thinking straight so he falls into the trap'. The problem is that his dialogue, his mannerisms and his approach speaks of a calm and collected individual. Right there you have someone who's level-headed and capable of assessing a situation. I can narrow it right down to that one piece of characterisation, and it then doesn't follow that he's not even asking the most basic questions of the situation.



Hold on, let's go back a step. If you have someone's name, you presumably therefore know something about them. It can't be just plucked randomly from the air and then presumptively know how to find them. So therefore by that process alone, Statesman knows what Wade's deal is. It's unique enough to stand out, even if he's a small-timer. Bearing in mind that by that very same logic anyone should be asking how Wade got his hands on the information and rituals he does, given that there are entire cults that are thousands of years old that are dedicated to this kind of research.

So then you have the location. It's significant. Not just to time travellers, but Statesman personally. His prior incarnation was here. He has a distinct, real and tangible connection to this place. That's not even a point of contention, or at least it shouldn't be.

So let's look at that: Statesman knows Wade tried to steal Synapse's powers. He knows that it's done with magic that steals powers. He knows that Wade is a small-time mage playing with big-time powers. And now he knows that Wade is goading him to come after him on Cimerora, where his own past incarnation once lived, and is therefore presumably a seat of Incarnate energy, past or present.

It's not hard to have two and two add up to be four at that point. That isn't conjuring a solution, that's not giving the character knowledge they don't have, everything I just wrote is present in the story. At the very least, Statesman should be cautious. Wade is demonstrably proving he's got more power than previously known. Statesman knows this. That's not me speculating, again the story tells us this.

Combine that with his calm attitude and lack of rushing into the situation and you have someone that's not only in control of their emotions, but in control of their faculties along with some foreknowledge of the situation. But in spite of all of that, he never once acts upon it in a reasonable and consistent manner. I really don't know how much more clearly I can spell that out.

There is a deliberate and knowing intervention on the part of the story writer to deny the character the ability to act as they naturally would in the course of the story as laid out to us.

I by no means want a comprehensive list of what could or couldn't be done, but all I just did there was follow a very simple train of factual evidence, characterisation and consistency. And I limited it to what we're seeing in the story rather than trying to comprehensively include all the contrary characterisations of Statesman. Within the story's own rules, his actions aren't consistent. It disrupts suspension of disbelief. As a player, as a reader, you expect a character to follow through on knowledge gained and the portrayal of the character as you have them at that moment.

And he does not.




S.

It is longer and a bit more satisfying....but I honestly can't find a point of reconciliation in Manticore killing Psyche. I've never personally seen a single instance in the game where knocking someone out doesn't turn off their powers, and we're still left with a Psyche who, apparently like Statesman before her, is angst-ridden to the point of death.

It paints the worst image of her I can imagine and never once suggests (and consistently with the character, even though she's able to put Aurora in an urn) that she's heroically capable of saving her own life or overcoming the obstacle that is Wade's ritual. She's left looking weak and incapable, and that seems to be a constant them of this story which has continued to diminish my faith in the writing of this arc and of the game generally.


S.

So your entire defense of the story to date is that in your reasoning Statesman has been inconsistently characterised, this is entirely reasonable and logical to have happen? That's incredibly weak as an argument. It wouldn't be hard to go to the Top Cow comics, the novels, the other canon sources of Statesman and find signs of his intelligence and experience. And you're assuming (without any evidence, I note) that Statesman doesn't know who Wade is when he calls him by name before the trap is sprung.

Again, this is retroactive reasoning to try and make the story work. The story doesn't fit the facts. I'm looking at what we see on the screen, and it runs contrary to even the most basic facts we know consistently about Statesman. The very fact that you say he survived magical attempts on his life speaks of experience with that very phenomenon! Or are we going to devolve into an argument because of prior characterisation that suggests that he might not be that smart, he hasn't remembered and learned? Seriously. I said before even the most neophyte hero could see that trap a mile away, so unless Statesman has a death wish and walks into the trap knowingly and willingly, or is so incapable of seeing that Wade has actual power at this point, it beggars common sense that Statesman can't work out something is up, even if he doesn't know the details.

Arguing mischaracterisation yet then saying 'according to this characterisation...' is defeating your own argument. That's a selective cherry picking of the character to try and argue the point...or guess what...? Fill in the gaps of the story that the story fails to do. I'm staggered you're trying to argue that.


But...you just argued from a single instance where you said that's what he'd do! You're assuming and assuming and assuming and filling in gaps without ever once going towards giving an explanation that is consistent with the character. Yes, I'm arguing from a standpoint of the character that favors the positive view, but at least I've been willing to look at the character with all its inconsistencies and done my best to make sense of it.

I'm sorry to say this to you in this thread, and I apologise as it's not personally directed at you, but I am sick and tired of either a biased view towards the character that deems Statesman incapable of even the most basic common sense or experience, and more importantly one that deems Darren Wade to be a genius planner and schemer when time and again (and this must be the sixth or seventh time I've said it) the scheme is unrealistically perfect by any reasonable standard. It's frankly ridiculous to laud his planning for contingencies and utter understanding of his opponents when even as people are playing it, they are (for the sake of advancing the story only) forgoing their characters and their own basic common sense to enable yet another cutscene event that ever-so-conveniently prevents them being able to do anything about it.

This is not planning, this is railroad scriptwriting. Please, please show me how our fighting impossible to account for variables like the minions in Cimerora that prevent us getting to Statesman on time, the exact timing of being present just to see Miss Liberty die, the complete defiance of reason that makes us desert an obvious target in Sister Psyche so Manticore can be so 'expertly' manipulated to kill her (not to mention forgoing any thought of a non-lethal solution) and so much more is some kind of genius planning. Not even Nemesis gets it this good this often. The implausibility just mounts up beyond reasonable standards.

And I'd briefly respond to the suggestion that Sister Psyche mind-controls Manticore to shoot the arrow and free Aurora...are we having another character tire of their life and end it because they're guilt or angst ridden? Honestly, it flabbergasts me that we seem to be thinking so little of the NPC's we claimed to think at least something decently of.

At the moment, I'm wondering if there's not a wave of self-entitlement going on that demands we be just so much better than the NPC's....




S.

Look, I have nothing to disagree with you there....I think I said more or less the same thing but in a different way, at least as far as the Joker is concerned. But as far as Wade's plans are concerned, even making allowances for the large gaps in the most obvious common sense reactions to things, his plan and its execution is so perfect as to be incredulous. Events that specifically rely on a meticulous timing so that the heroes particularly fail on a precise schedule when you have variables involving minions that Wade cannot control the ability of (unless he's also controlling when they are defeated) simply defies logic and most importantly, disbelief.

As I said before: I'm willing to accept a well-thought out plan and an intelligent planner. I'm not willing to accept events and plans that have little to do with either.



I It's not an article of faith whatsoever. You have clear and present precedent where the Statesman character has encountered magical means to end his life more than once, he also knows that Wade is baiting him, and most importantly, he has a wealth of superheroing experience. To argue that Statesman's behavior in that situation is consistent with the above is as equally disingenuous.

It frankly borders on the naive. This isn't an entitlement argument, it's not even arguing as a veteran player. It's an argument about Storytelling 101, which has simple and straightforward rules, foremost amongst which is consistency of characterisation. If you establish things about a character (ie Superman is honest, Batman plans for everything), then when said character does not do these things in the face of a situation where they normally would, that is blatant mischaracterisation that destroys any plausability, any credibility in the story, and any suspension of disbelief that the situation can happen.

This happens to Statesman as I outlined, and it happens to Manticore after numerous and citable occasions demonstrating the opposite, and it happens to Sister Psyche for the same. I never ever came to these conclusions haphazardly or out of some misguided sense of self-righteousness, I came to them by looking at the story and looking at the characters.

I write these words knowing that I am neither being an apologist for the story nor a demonising influence for damning it. What I am doing is holding up a piece of writing like any piece of writing and holding to the same standards that writing is meant to be held to. There is nothing disingenuous in that argument, and it is one I will defend quite willingly.



S.

I think you hit the nail on the head there though, Arcana....it's possible but not likely that his plan has contingencies. But seriously, for the sake of credibility and just internal story consistency, the only way his plan works is because the story says it does.

Statesman dies not because he has an amazing plan, but because, as was stated ad infinitum, he somehow loses the power of common sense and walks into an obvious trap even the most neophyte hero could see coming. That's not even player knowledge factoring in, that's how a character of reasonable intelligence would see things. The same goes for this scenario; the only reason you draw off someone is so that the actual plan can go ahead.

But at that juncture, even knowing this, I do as I'm bidden (because the story simply won't advance if I just exit the mission) and the killing of Psyche ensues. That's not advance planning or contingency planning, that is the plot demanding (not suggesting, not even remotely trying to fool me) that I take this course of action.

The Joker in Dark Knight doesn't come off as omniscient to me because his plan is entirely unpredictable, and relies on his assumptions about human nature more than anything else. And more importantly, his plan fails because of those assumptions. If you then take that logic and apply it to Wade, this means then that he has somehow been able to totally and correctly understand your character, their motivations and what they would do down to the letter. Despite the fact that by the time SSA #1 starts, you're a random factor. I'm willing to accept a master planner, what I'm not willing to accept is the very level of omniscience you yourself have mentioned.

Asking me to buy into a story conceit about Wade that he has all these contingencies and backup plans are fine...so long as the conditions for them occurring are just as reasonable as the plan itself. But even then, we're presented with knowledge only Wade has, despite there being pre-existing groups who do and should have the knowledge already; we have solutions to situations like the removal of Statesman's powers handed to us with Miss Liberty with the dubious caveat that 'only those who want to come back can be summoned' whilst never once questioning if Red Widow does; and lastly, we see characters acting frankly out of character and abandoning reason when the logic gap is so obvious it becomes apparent that the plan (such as it is) is reliant far more on such psychological weaknesses in the Phalanx that if they were actual people, they'd be stood down from active service because of them.

These things have nothing to do with Wade's supposed level of planning and far more to do with absolutism in the story. It's totally unrealistic for me to sit here and say for example that Manticore had no other option but to kill Psyche, but because the story says so, I'm forced to accept it. If there were no other options, if Wade had considered all the possibilities, then why can I sit here and come up with at least half a dozen totally plausible alternatives on the fly? At some point I need to stop being an apologist for the story and view it as it is, not as I wish it should be or construct reasons for how it would be. That is not my job.

It's as I said before about the story: if you as the viewer/reader have to start filling in the gaps so that the story works, then the story isn't working to begin with.


S.

I read that, and I read the 'we still have a weapon that can defeat him' bit, too. Power of Plot, sorry. If these things weren't plot convenient, then we would've had a weapon to stop Wade as far back as Part 1.

So I was still meh.



S.

Nah. Again, we're theorising that he did with a little backup from his in-story dialog. But he has the power of Plot, pure and simple. The great saying of 'no plan survives contact with the enemy' goes right out the window here, because since Part 1, Wade hasn't put a foot wrong.

Consider that a moment. His timing has been perfect. His plans flawless, unable to be predicted by anyone or prevented similarly. When you write fiction, you can do that. There's noone else involved that can disrupt that.

In a game like this, it becomes painfully obvious that you have to point the player in a direction they have not even the illusion of say in to achieve that end. There's a lot of subtler ways this could've been done, and a lot more believable, too.

But this way...I just don't believe in it or Wade's abilities anymore. The power of Plot is glaringly in the open.



S.

Hey, I'd buy into that assumption if there was anything to support it. And what precisely made death the only option here? And we've just come off the Valentine's event where we now know of a pretty surefire way to resurrect people.

As I said before, I just gave up caring at that point in the story. The narrow box was 'kill Psyche to promote Penny Yin' and so we were shoehorned into it. And as Johnny_Butane noted, powers work kinda specifically in this universe. You get defeated (not necessarily dead) and your powers stop working.

In any event, I couldn't be bothered being a theorist that fills in the gaps for a story that can't do it on its own. If I have to start making up reasons to make the story work, then the story isn't working, in my book.


S.

Eh, maybe...but it totally felt out of keeping with the rest of the story. I didn't even return to Akarist to get the ritual, so I just felt...meh.



S.

Lord of the Rings Online utilises instanced 'neighbourhoods', but the downside to that is that it's the same neighbourhood over and over again. Maybe that'd be the way to go for personal housing (say like an apartment block like the ones we see now in New Atlas Park) with a placement hook system to allow for customisation.

But I agree with other posters, it'd be really great to keep this going ala the interaction that was done for creating a costume set on these forums. I like to think that this can be potentially a brainstorming thread to sort out not only what the standing problems are but what the potential solutions are too. I certainly hope I'm not treading on toes with this, of course.

I love my base building friends to bits and really want to give them the best shot at continuing to wow me.



S.