The ONE thing you want to know...
By
Agent White,
Posted on: 2012-07-16 20:29 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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From the point of view of a writer, though, it's pretty valuable criticism.|
Originally Posted by Mazey
When what I said was "Calling a story inconsistent is either inaccurate, meaningless or pointless. My point is exactly that it's a bad way to criticise a story and, if you want to do so, there are far better options."
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Internal consistency is important in selling writing, in all senses of the world. You have to build a level of faith on the part of the reader, and inconsistency undermines that faith. When something unexpected happens in the story, or a character does something unusual, you want the reader to follow along without question, not have half their mind wondering if it's just another ****-up on the part of the writer.
Inconsistency is the literary equivalent of having someone standing behind your reader, poking them in the back every so often. It's annoying. distracting, and it reduces their emotional engagement with the characters and world. And the more engaged you can get the reader, the more likely they are to keep reading, and then buy the next book in the series.
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Well, Odysseus has been getting quite a lot of screen time recently - like he's now one of the more fleshed-out faction leaders - so someone at the studio must feel that he and his gang are still useful to the story.
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Originally Posted by SlickRiptide
I'm right there with you. I think the studio just considers them superfluous these days. Their schtick is that they are the natural origin villains; the guys who are literally warriors because they train and hone their skills without benefit of super powers. That's about all they ever amounted to in terms of the game. They're just the "Talos Island Gang".
After eight years, they're still getting their butts handed to them by the Freakshow in all of the street battles. In every other zone, the developers split the street conflicts evenly between the warring factions, but in Talos Island, for some reason the Warriors are portrayed as the losers in all of the battles and they're even given really wimpy, lame dialog to boot. Nobody seems to care to fix it. Given that, I conclude that nobody at the studio has any kind of investment in them. |
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Odysseus's personal army.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Who are these guys?
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| Why do they use melee weapons and how can this make them successful against gangs that use guns? |
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| They trade magic artefacts, but do they use them? How? |
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| They style themselves after ancient Greek tradition and mythos, but why? |
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| And how seriously do they take it? |
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| On the one hand we have Alexander "The Great" Pavlidis whose name suggest he's actually Greek, but only uses the moniker as his nickname, yet on the other hand we have Menelaus and Achilles leading a war against Hector in a recreation of events worthy of the Summer Court Fae. What are these guys about and where can we find depth about them? |
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Broad response, but I think I'd like to know more about the world outside of Paragon and the Isles. Is New York City as much as a crime hotspot as it's made out to be in most other superhero universes? Have certain cities been wiped out/rebuilt? Where else did the Rikti invade, was their major damage, and so on. As much as I appreciate the localized story in CoH, I'd like to do a bit of globetrotting for a change of pace, see how the rest of the world behaves on an Earth populated with extraordinarily powerful individuals all over the place.
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Criticism is good for a writer, but that doesn't mean the word "inconsistent" is the best way to do it. That word can refer to many things all of which can be referred to in a more specific manner, which is more helpful and less vague. Further, most of the time people use it, there's actually little justification that it's actually true, while the other way of referring to the issue can be justified.|
Originally Posted by Grouchybeast
From the point of view of a writer, though, it's pretty valuable criticism.
Internal consistency is important in selling writing, in all senses of the world. You have to build a level of faith on the part of the reader, and inconsistency undermines that faith. When something unexpected happens in the story, or a character does something unusual, you want the reader to follow along without question, not have half their mind wondering if it's just another ****-up on the part of the writer. Inconsistency is the literary equivalent of having someone standing behind your reader, poking them in the back every so often. It's annoying. distracting, and it reduces their emotional engagement with the characters and world. And the more engaged you can get the reader, the more likely they are to keep reading, and then buy the next book in the series. |
Here's some specific examples:
1) Are you criticising the fact that a group of intergalactic nomadic aliens were hunted to extinction, even though at least a few of them should have had no trouble escaping?
You certainly might want to call that inconsistent, but really you have no reason to assume it is, the writer might have a very good reason as to how it happened, they just never explained it properly, hence, it seems far better to simply call it a plot hole.
2) Are you criticising the fact that a character in the story is suddenly acting differently to the way the story has established how they would act?
That certainly seems inconsistent but, again, the writer might well have done it for a specific reason which wasn't explained properly, so, it seems far better to call it bad characterisation.
3) Are you criticising that the story refers to an event happening on a Thursday one time, and then Wednesday another?
This is certainly the most justifiable way of using the word inconsistency, but it doesn't seem likely that the writer intended those days to be different and, if told, would likely just chance the word for future editions of the book, so surely it's better to just call it a mistake.
Whatever the situation, calling the story inconsistent is less effective and less accurate than more specific words would be.
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Or, you can just use the word the way the vast majority of English-speakers do.
| Whatever the situation, calling the story inconsistent is less effective and less accurate than more specific words would be. |
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That doesn't change the statement you quoted in the slightest, nor address the individual points I made that you failed to quote.|
Originally Posted by Venture
Or, you can just use the word the way the vast majority of English-speakers do.
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Using the word the way most people do it is still the case that it is less effective and less accurate than using the more specific words for any particular situation where someone might use it.
As I said before, the word is so vague that the only difference between saying "that story's inconsistent" and "I don't like that story" is that the former might fool someone into thinking you've actually bothered to make an attempt at analysing the story before spouting your mouth off. In the context of writing, it's nothing but a buzz word with no real meaning of it's own at all.
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Again, personally, I do find it useful, because it's referring to a class of error that all have the same end result on the reader. It's class of technical error, just like spelling or grammar mistakes, if potentially more subtle and complex. It's also something that can have a major effect on the reader's experience, so it's one that writers need to understand.|
Originally Posted by Mazey
Criticism is good for a writer, but that doesn't mean the word "inconsistent" is the best way to do it. That word can refer to many things all of which can be referred to in a more specific manner, which is more helpful and less vague.
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Sure, you can make a list of different ways a story can fail to maintain internal consistency, and they can all be good examples for writers to consider. However, putting them in a framework that also explains why that type of error is harmful means you have a way of evaluating writing in a way that hopefully helps writers understand why 'oh, it doesn't matter, no one will care' is not a smart approach to these kinds of errors. They do matter, and people will care. (Or, worse, stop caring and stop giving you their money.)
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Well, we did get David "Odysseus" Hill in the Mortimer Kal Strike Force. That strike force actually gave the warriors a little more depth, at least for me.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Honestly, giving the Warriors some depth could be as simple as giving all of the named ones real names, with the Greek name in quotes, exactly like Alexander "The Great" Pavlidis. It suggests that these are real people with real lives and real backstories who simply took on the identities of ancient Greek heroes, but whose "real person" personalities still exist behind the name. That's pretty much the definition of depth - a person who is more than he first appears. Giving these guys more to their faction and more to their individual stories than JUST a Greek myth name would be a good first step.
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Well, that figures. It's in the one Strike Force I haven't done...
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Originally Posted by Zaloopa
Well, we did get David "Odysseus" Hill in the Mortimer Kal Strike Force. That strike force actually gave the warriors a little more depth, at least for me.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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I presume that I don't have to explain what I did there.|
Originally Posted by Not Mazey
As I said before, the word is so vague that the only difference between saying "that story's good" and "I like that story" is that the former might fool someone into thinking you've actually bothered to make an attempt at analysing the story before spouting your mouth off. In the context of writing, it's nothing but a buzz word with no real meaning of it's own at all.
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There are classes of words that are useful despite being somewhat vague by themselves. If someone really wants to know what's "good" or "inconsistent" then they can ask. More often than not, the person who wrote those words already made the detailed analysis previously in the thread. In other cases, the person is referring to eight years of accumulated writing and is giving an impression of the whole thing. Nobody is going to give a detailed critique every single time they mention something. If people want details (and as you see from the many of the responses, the respondents would prefer that the "usual suspects" not expand on their opinions) they'll ask for them.
If I'm criticizing a particular task force, then sure; I'd give details about the problems. If I was talking about that same task force a year later, I'd be less inclined to do so. If I was referring to the entire history of Paragon City, I'd probably just wave at that portion and say "it's ____" and go on to whatever my actual point at the time is.
"Good" is just as meaningless and useless as "inconsistent" or "boring" or "exciting" but it doesn't stop anyone using those words as if they have some top-level, mutually-agreed upon meaning instead of being entirely personal and subjective in meaning.
It's a losing battle to insist that everyone who writes criticism (positive or negative) does it in a detailed and thoughtful manner. Most people don't have that much investment in their opinions and many times they're just reaffirming opinions that they are already well known to carry.
Rather than insist that everyone should be a literary critic when discussing these things (and let me just forestall the knee-jerk response that you didn't actually say that since we both can see that you didn't say those precise words; you just insisted that vague is "bad" and precision is "good" which amounts to the same thing in my mind) it's better to ask for some elucidation on any particular thing that you find to be "fuzzy" about someone's opinion on something.
If you're going to insist that only quantifiable things can really be "inconsistent" and even then they should be called something else then I can only nod my head, say "Okay, sure" and go on using "inconsistent" or "good" or whatever other vague but generally accepted words I use, for their generally accepted purposes.
What does a native of the Rogue Isles sound like? Do the have some sort of French or mid European accent? Is it a mid Atlantic one? With their back ground it should not sound American.
How many professional sports teams are in Paragon? With this number of heroes are there even professional sports in this world?
How many radio stations does Paragon have? Which is the classic rock one? What one programs rap? Country music? All news?
Is the University part of the Rhode Island educational system or is it confined to Paragon?
Do they offer degrees in anything besides IO's?
How many TV stations are there? How many news papers?
Why in 8 years has there never been an election for mayor?
Something witty and profound
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I made up the Galaxy City Stars and Steel Canyon Steelers football teams for one of my characters backstory. He got traded to Steel Canyon after he dogged his quarterback in the press. Of course, we know what happened next... He switched to hero-ing because there's not enough fame and money in pro sports in Paragon what with all the capes flying around.|
Originally Posted by Fista
How many professional sports teams are in Paragon? With this number of heroes are there even professional sports in this world?
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A while back, ZARTAIN and Plasma Warrior came up with the idea that Paragon City's football team was "The Paragon City Enforcers." I think the mock ads they did ("Hi, I'm Flash Masterson of the Paragon City Enforcers") are still around somewhere...|
Originally Posted by blackjak
I made up the Galaxy City Stars and Steel Canyon Steelers football teams for one of my characters backstory. He got traded to Steel Canyon after he dogged his quarterback in the press. Of course, we know what happened next... He switched to hero-ing because there's not enough fame and money in pro sports in Paragon what with all the capes flying around.
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In our PCU thread The Paragon City University is home of the Statesmen|
Originally Posted by Dark_Respite
A while back, ZARTAIN and Plasma Warrior came up with the idea that Paragon City's football team was "The Paragon City Enforcers." I think the mock ads they did ("Hi, I'm Flash Masterson of the Paragon City Enforcers") are still around somewhere...
Michelle aka Samuraiko/Dark_Respite |
And there COV counterpart UoE are called the Islanders
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They're in New England, so they might just be a part of New England sports teams.|
Originally Posted by Fista
How many professional sports teams are in Paragon? With this number of heroes are there even professional sports in this world?
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| Why in 8 years has there never been an election for mayor? |
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Probably would have some Franco-Anglican to it.|
Originally Posted by Fista
What does a native of the Rogue Isles sound like? Do the have some sort of French or mid European accent? Is it a mid Atlantic one? With their back ground it should not sound American.
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| Why in 8 years has there never been an election for mayor? |
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To quote (and lampshade) Synapse's comment in the FREEDOM PHALANX novel:|
Originally Posted by Fista
Why in 8 years has there never been an election for mayor?
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"Normal people do not vote municipal."
Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite
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THE COURSE OF SUPERHERO ROMANCE CONTINUES!
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THE COURSE OF SUPERHERO ROMANCE CONTINUES!
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I've been mayor of Paragon (on Pinnacle, anyway) since 2005, actually.
We had an election and everything. I even had AG put on a suit and camp in City Hall just for that reason, her office was off to the left when you enter. We haven't had another election since then, so I'm still going strong!
Carl and Sons @Aurora Girl (Pinnacle)
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Originally Posted by EarthWyrm
But I do understand that there is an internet rule that any bad idea must be presented by someone at least twice a year to remind everyone who hasn't already read every previous thread on the topic precisely why the idea is bad.
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*All* words can be shown to be ambiguous when used by poor speakers. However, "that story is inconsistent" says something very precise that no other words that aren't direct synonyms can express, and the only good use for using more words is to be more precise in describing the *location* of the inconsistency: what specifically is inconsistent with what else.|
Originally Posted by Mazey
That doesn't change the statement you quoted in the slightest, nor address the individual points I made that you failed to quote.
Using the word the way most people do it is still the case that it is less effective and less accurate than using the more specific words for any particular situation where someone might use it. As I said before, the word is so vague that the only difference between saying "that story's inconsistent" and "I don't like that story" is that the former might fool someone into thinking you've actually bothered to make an attempt at analysing the story before spouting your mouth off. In the context of writing, it's nothing but a buzz word with no real meaning of it's own at all. |
I assume that any writer that I say "there is a serious inconsistency in this part of the story" either knows what I mean and no more words are necessary to express that thought (which is not the same thing as saying more discussion wouldn't be useful), or they are illiterate and no more words would be helpful to express that thought (unless I'm talking to a six year old in which case a Dr Seuss story that illustrates the concept of inconsistency might be warranted).
The Menders have been portrayed with inconsistent knowledge of the Coming Storm and the Well of the Furies. Incarnate power has been portrayed inconsistently with Prometheus' description of the difference between Incarnates and Ascendents. Origin of Power has serious inconsistencies with the Well of the Furies itself, without using magical handwaves. Which makes the use of the term "magical" itself generally inconsistent any reasonable definition of magic. That's separate from the fact that the inconsistencies we were asked to ignore in the origin system in terms of origin partitioning are invoked in Origin of Power, making it impossible to ignore.
If I have to explain why non-scientific technology or non-magical magic is an inconsistency to a writer, there's very little point at all. I go back to reality, they go back to Dan Brown, and we call it a day.
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There's nothing specific in the lore I want to know. Or to be more accurate, there's nothing specific I want the devs to try to explain. I mean I'd love to know more about Rularuu: what is he, what are his minions, what are the reflections, etc, but if they actually did a Shadow Shard arc he'd probably turn out to be some alternate reality Marcus Cole who ate someone's Well and became a Well or some stupid crap. So I'm fine with them just creating shiny new two-dimensional enemy groups out of thin air and leaving stuff I actually like the hell alone.
That said, there are a few things I do want to know, just because I think the writers don't even know, even though they keep using the concepts:
1) How exactly does the CoH multiverse work? What is the nature of, say, Infernal's dimension, and is it the same one Envoy of Shadows comes from? What about Croatoa's spirit world, or the Netherworld?
2) How exactly does time travel work in the CoH universe?
3) What exactly is the definition of a god? For a world with so much basis in mythology, that term is getting thrown around a lot lately, and the only thing we have to separate an actual god from a very powerful metahuman is War Witch's little blurb in the Origin of Power storyline, which is suspect due to narrator's bias.
4) Do they not know ParagonWiki exists? I'm not even talking about ***-pulls and inconsistencies, or trying to shoehorn established ideas into new storylines where they don't really fit, or "but I had a better idea." I'm talking about blatant cases of Did Not Do The Research such as "you'll be piloting a Zeus Titan."
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Right now, the one thing I want to know:
Will regen be proliferated to tanks?
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Addressing the first three:|
Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
That said, there are a few things I do want to know, just because I think the writers don't even know, even though they keep using the concepts:
1) How exactly does the CoH multiverse work? What is the nature of, say, Infernal's dimension, and is it the same one Envoy of Shadows comes from? What about Croatoa's spirit world, or the Netherworld? 2) How exactly does time travel work in the CoH universe? 3) What exactly is the definition of a god? For a world with so much basis in mythology, that term is getting thrown around a lot lately, and the only thing we have to separate an actual god from a very powerful metahuman is War Witch's little blurb in the Origin of Power storyline, which is suspect due to narrator's bias. |
I think its often the case that fiction writers invoke alternate dimensions, alternate timelines, and the supernatural because they think it gives them carte blanc to do whatever they want. Its alternate dimensions: anything is possible. Its alternate timelines: anything is possible. Its supernatural: anything is possible.
I think that authors who think this forget that when you're telling a story it cannot be true that anything is possible. If anything is possible, nothing you say matters. Stories require involvement on the part of the audience, and that involvement generally requires that the audience believe what happens is reasonable, consequences are logical, that the world the story exists in makes sense. If there are no rules, you're not likely to capture the attention of very many people.
I don't know that Paragon Studios writers think this, but I've often been concerned they do. Time travel, alternate universes, hierarchical supernatural power; these things should be used only because they add something specific to the story, and only when you have worked out a very clear sense of how those things work. You don't just use them haphazardously like randomly setting a story in San Francisco having never stepped foot in the city.
One thing I think JK Rowling definitely got generally correct: she's said in interviews that she spent five years thinking about how magic worked in the Harry Potter universe *before* starting to write The Philosopher's Stone. That sounds just about right. Because if magic can do anything, there's no such thing as a problem, no such thing as conflict, and no such thing as drama. There's no story.
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| 4) Do they not know ParagonWiki exists? I'm not even talking about ***-pulls and inconsistencies, or trying to shoehorn established ideas into new storylines where they don't really fit, or "but I had a better idea." I'm talking about blatant cases of Did Not Do The Research such as "you'll be piloting a Zeus Titan." |
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I agree with this wholeheartedly, and this brings up the concept of "consistency." A good fictional story breaks the laws of our reality, but is nevertheless governed by its own internal laws and its own internal logic such that the audience can "get" the setting and be able to reason out actions, reactions and consequences. A key part in making your audience care about your story is letting them understand what's happening and why is it happening, and in so doing empower them to hypothesise. "If this happened, then very likely that would happen as a result." Grounding people into a fictional universe is of paramount importance, and it's where a lot of I18-I20 storylines fail by being too vague and too "sequence of random events" -ish.|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
I think its often the case that fiction writers invoke alternate dimensions, alternate timelines, and the supernatural because they think it gives them carte blanc to do whatever they want. Its alternate dimensions: anything is possible. Its alternate timelines: anything is possible. Its supernatural: anything is possible.
I think that authors who think this forget that when you're telling a story it cannot be true that anything is possible. If anything is possible, nothing you say matters. Stories require involvement on the part of the audience, and that involvement generally requires that the audience believe what happens is reasonable, consequences are logical, that the world the story exists in makes sense. If there are no rules, you're not likely to capture the attention of very many people. |
The real curiosity here is that the more you ground a story and the stronger its internal laws, the more powerful plot twists become. A twist is only a twist if it's both surprising and logical, and the only way to achieve this is to educate the audience in the internal rules of your fictional setting. This way, you teach them to anticipate events before they happen, thus setting themselves up for the surprise, and you teach them to understand events, thus setting them up for comprehending where their expectations were wrong. I personally find a plot twist I didn't see, but which makes me of "Doh! Of course!" as soon as it happens to be one of the most satisfying parts of a story.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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After eight years, they're still getting their butts handed to them by the Freakshow in all of the street battles. In every other zone, the developers split the street conflicts evenly between the warring factions, but in Talos Island, for some reason the Warriors are portrayed as the losers in all of the battles and they're even given really wimpy, lame dialog to boot. Nobody seems to care to fix it. Given that, I conclude that nobody at the studio has any kind of investment in them.