Channel 4 has been showing the Lord of the Rings trilogy over the past couple of Saturdays (The Return of the King is on next week, if you're interested). Although I love these films – I think the books are great, and I have the extended edition DVDs – it seems that I can't take them remotely seriously if I come in half way through. Watch from the very beginning, and you get drawn completely into the story, which is on an incredibly epic scale; come in an hour or so into it and you have a bunch of beardy people wandering around making vague and incomprehensible statements. And sometimes they say "Tell me, where is Gandalf, for I much desire to speak with him?", which makes me dissolve into giggles every time.
Once you get into it, though, The Lord of the Rings is a great example of a very old storytelling technique: Good in a titanic struggle with Evil. Sometimes the Good characters are flawed or questionably ethical, sometimes the Evil characters are doing the wrong thing for good reasons; nevertheless, some form of this conflict drives a pretty high percentage of storylines in film, literature and other media. (And most of the rest are some variant of "boy meets girl, boy smooches girl, boy and girl live happily ever after.") What I find particularly interesting in this framework is the flexibility with which you can portray evil.
Probably the most prevalent type of evil character is the "greed driven to manic proportions" type. Whether they're after money (Die Hard's Hans Gruber), power (Star Wars' Sith) or both (pick a Bond villain), the pattern is clear – these guys (and it's almost exclusively guys) want something so very badly, they will stop at nothing to get it. I suspect that they're used so much because it's very easy to identify with them. Humans are naturally greedy, and most people can point to at least one occasion when greed pushed them to do something that they knew was wrong and that they wouldn't otherwise have done. The "greed villain" is simply an extension of that concept.
Then we have the "altruistic evil" character, the one who is trying to correct a major injustice, and is now committing his own injustices to do so. The Die Hard trilogy comes in again here with its second installment, trotting out the "disgruntled ex-military official sticking it to his even more evil superiors" trope. Interestingly, this kind of evil is one that is very, very close to the characteristic of "one man breaks the rules to bring great justice", which is reserved solely for heroes. Not that it should be, of course – I've written at some length about this – but I find it interesting that the same traits can be used equally for a wholly good character and a wholly evil one.
Thirdly, we come to the "just plain evil" character. These are rare, probably because it's impossible to identify with them unless you are willing to admit that you are also completely evil and carrying out atrocities for no reason other than that you wanted to. This loops us back round to The Lord of the Rings, with Sauron; although he has elements of "greedy evil", he's supposed to be the Satan character of the story, and as such is simply out to destroy all that's good. Everything touched by Sauron's influence becomes corrupted; the men who take the Nine Rings become Ringwraiths, fulfilling the human desire for immortality while removing the free will and capacity to do good that would give it any meaning, while the Elves (beautiful and pure creatures in the books, instead of...well...Orlando Bloom) become the Orcs, hideous and crude characters bent on destruction.
These categories often have fairly indistinct boundaries, but once a character is fixed in one of them they don't often move out. That's a shame, as stories are often vastly improved when this does happen. Take the Sean Connery/Nic Cage vehicle The Rock. At first, the villains are all obviously from the second category, attempting to restore recognition to Marines that have been "disappeared" by their government. However, it later becomes clear that only two of them actually fit that description, with the others having only come along for the money. That sets up a much more interesting situation, in which our villains come very close to crossing into hero territory, despite having actively participated in brutally slaughtering a large number of people.
The same thing happens in webcomics. In Rich Burlew's Order of the Stick, key baddie Xykon has consistently been painted as something of a fool – an evil fool, undoubtedly, with all the trappings of a standard Dark Lord (he used to live in a dungeon filled with goblins, for crying out loud), but a fool nonetheless. Even though he clearly enjoys performing acts of evil, his heart (or his chest cavity, at any rate) is not in it, and he's only really doing it for the theatrics. Even when Xykon kills Roy, the key character of the strip, he gives him the chance to back out of the fight and go off and train for a bit, just so that they can be on level terms. Although he does want to win, he also wants to make it interesting; the real evil planning and methodical destruction is left to his sidekick Redcloak.
Burlew has clearly noticed that Xykon's comedy value has been damaging his position as key antagonist of the strip, and he's fixed that by releasing a prequel book (Start of Darkness) telling us about Xykon's origins and motivations. (Plenty of spoilers ahead, so OotS fans who haven't read it may want to look away now.) In this book, Redcloak is portrayed as a clear second-category villain, doing everything for the good of his people and his god. He may be evil, and he may be responsible for the destruction of entire cities (and destabilising the universe), but he has an internally consistent reason for all that he does.
Xykon, on the other hand, is just flat-out evil all the way. He double-crosses his own men, makes people work for him by threatening their entire families with death, magically rips off all of his own flesh in order to become more powerful, and finally tricks Redcloak into murdering his own brother so that he can be certain of his loyalty. This is not an "oops, I appear to have accidentally yet joyfully killed someone" evil character, this is a monster without any saving graces whatsoever. His comedy role has been completely overtaken by the Monster in the Darkness, who, incidentally, is very similar to the Xykon from the online strip: despite its own considerable power, it doesn't actually care what it does so long as it gets tasty food.
Given that a lot of art is to do with reflecting reality, should we be worried that evil characters are so popular? Probably not. It's incredibly unlikely that anyone is going to watch Darth Vader choking someone to death for their incompetence and say "hey, I know, Billy over there didn't do what I asked him to - I think I'll strangle the life out of him!" Indeed, we have more to worry about with the portrayal of heroes, given that much of the US's current policy on human rights for terrorist suspects seems to be based on Jack Bauer's opinions. Villains are an acceptable outlet for our own less-than-wholesome sides, and let's face it, they're just damn cool.
Thank you for reading. I will be retreating to my Dark Tower to cackle and plot your downfall momentarily.
Sunday, 21 September 2008
Playing "Dr. Evil" by They Might Be Giants did not help me write this as much as it should have.
Thursday, 31 January 2008
In Which I Pretend That This Is Actually Websnark
There's changes happening over on Questionable Content. For those unfamiliar with QC, it's a webcomic by Jeph Jacques detailing the only slightly unbelievable lives of a number of young people in Massachusetts. Basically it's Friends, but funnier, with more bizarre comedy, and with added swearing. Apart from that, it doesn't really live up to its name. It's also very much character-driven, with the central dynamic between Marten, Faye and Dora providing not only most of the tension and drama, but a significant proportion of the comedy as well.
The main thing that you have to know about Marten is that, in essence, he's a wuss. Eric Burns of Websnark wrote a long and detailed essay on this very subject, although he doesn't touch on why that might be. Personally, I think it's because Marten is constantly surrounded by intimidating women. Dora is self-confident, owns her own business, and makes it into the Goth Window (not goth enough to laugh at her, just goth enough to be a little scary). Faye is definitely scary, life having baked a tough shell around her to the point where anyone who tries to break through that shell is looking at a world of pain. Marten's own mother made a living out of being very definitely intimidating to men, in ways that I am not going to detail in a family-friendly setting. In fact, practically every woman Marten meets is scary in one way or another (with the notable exception of the very vulnerable but still independent and friendly Hannelore - and Marten is always relaxed around her, too).
Marten's reaction to this situation is understandable (it's what I would do, certainly) - he folds in on himself. Whenever he's remotely nervous he goes into the pose you see in panel one here, and frequently avoids eye contact - he's trying to protect himself. In the strip that Burns analyses in the above link, Marten goes one step further by giving in vocally as well, despite Ellen's accusations being complete rubbish. This is a pretty well established character trait by now, and it's been the source of a lot of the storylines over the last few months.
The key to keeping a story fresh is, of course, changing it over time, and we saw some suggestions of that with yesterday's strip. Dora's latent insecurities came to the fore very obviously, and they showed themselves in anger and huffiness. (Not the "silent treatment", though, and thank goodness for that. Short of actual abuse, there's no stupider way of working through problems, and Jacques credits his characters with enough intelligence not to do it.) The big change, though was in Marten. He was in the right, and he knew it, and this time he argued his case succinctly and strongly but without being unnecessarily mean. His body language was significant, too - no defensive poses at any point, and in the final panel we see him protecting Dora, something we've never seen before. For Dora's part, she's nothing but defensive. This from a woman who, let's not forget, is perfectly capable of organising both a mob to defeat the scooter-based vigilante warrior chick (look, I know that makes no sense, just go with it for now, OK?) and a Mad Max-style chair joust.
We're suddenly seeing sides of both these characters that have never been obvious before, but are still entirely plausible. In other words, they're developing and moving on in their lives, and especially in their relationship with each other. It's a definite change in the strip's dynamic, but not one that breaks its ethos or basic setup, which means that there are now many new storylines opening up without alienating the current fanbase. That's a very difficult trick to pull off, in any creative medium, and I'm dead impressed that Jacques is managing it.
Now, let's contrast this with yesterday's XKCD. This particular comic, "Journal 2" is a followup and counterpoint to "Journal". Both feature Black Hat, the as-yet unnamed character who derives all of his enjoyment from screwing with people's minds, resulting in, as they say, hilarious consequences. In "Journal 2", though, his actions backfire spectacularly.
In other circumstances, this would be an effective and satisfying followup, finally giving Black Hat the comeuppance that he so richly deserved. For a few reasons, though, it doesn't work. First, it's too soon. XKCD doesn't often do continuing storylines, but when it does it's either over very short timespans (the 1337 story arc was over in less than a week) or very long ones (I don't think the Red Spiders arc has ended yet, and it's been going for two years). In contrast, suddenly revisiting a situation with only a few intervening comics feels odd and rushed.
Secondly, this is the kind of situation that could quite easily destroy Black Hat as a character. He's lost his hat, anyway, which is going to make him quite difficult to recognise in a stick figure comic. Whereas dropping a bombshell like this on a character would work in Questionable Content, it doesn't have nearly the same impact in XKCD because it's not a story-driven comic. All the humour comes from the situations, the surreal actions, the incredibly geeky references. The audience has no emotional investment in Black Hat, so doing this to him is just going to make us want another character who can keep up the inventive nastiness.
Thirdly, and most importantly, it is very possible that Randall Munroe has drawn this comic as a response to fan reactions. In the official forum thread for "Journal", there were plenty of people going "Yeah! Right on!", but there was also a significant proportion of posters expressing their disappointment with Black Hat. Poster "Chef Brian" summed it up well:Eh. I really liked the black hat guy, but this one just leaves a foul taste in the mouth.
This isn't a reaction that often appears in XKCD threads. Sometimes people don't find the comic funny - very rarely do they react so unfavourably to the ideas it contains. "Journal 2" looks very much as though Munroe has also realised that Black Hat's actions are reprehensible, and is rushing out a comic to emphasise this point - possibly because, as one of the forum members pointed out, the worst thing about Black Hat's actions in this case is that they are so easily reproducible.
If that's what happened, the idea is laudable, but it takes away from the comic as a whole. Especially in the case of XKCD, a comic that generally makes no allowances whatsoever for the sensibilities of its audience (you won't understand this comic unless you've both watched 2001: A Space Odyssey and played the video game Portal, or at least unless you are very familiar with geek culture), it would be a shame to let the audience dictate what happens, even indirectly. Down that route lies the lowest common denominator. XKCD has coped well with enormous online exposure so far, and I really hope that this is not a sign of things to come.
Two comics, one changing its characters subtly and developing in new directions, the other changing a character hugely, quite possibly for the wrong reasons. Masterclasses in how to to character development and how not to do it, both on the same day. What are the odds, eh?
Tuesday, 24 April 2007
Why yes! My entire world view is wrong! Thank you!
The genre of "Christian literature" is pretty successful at the moment. You've got books dealing with proper heavy theology, books dealing with specific aspects of faith, books about other faiths and how they relate to Christianity, and loads of different versions of the Bible. The Bible, actually, is doing incredibly well - most people know that it's the best-selling book of all time, but I was surprised to find out recently that it is also the best-selling book every single year.
It's not surprising, and in fact quite gratifying, that other forms of entertainment have their own Christian branches. Some of them aren't really very exciting (Christian popular music, when presented just as music rather than as a form of worship, still has some way to go, the first step of which should be "attempting not to sound like yet another U2/Coldplay clone"), while others - the Christian children's novel, for instance - have been wildly successful outside their original genre. Which brings us to the webcomic "Josh and Jimbo: Long Street".
I found this site from a Google advert on Questionable Content, of all places (I wonder whether either party would be particularly happy about that fact - QC rarely lives up to its name, but its ethos is very distinctly different to Long Street's). I've only read the first episode, and already I'm despairing.
First, the artwork. It's not bad by any means, it's just that it could be done so much better. If you're going to go for a 3D modelling approach, then make sure you don't leave the job half done. Read a couple of pages of Crimson Dark if you want to see how this style of artwork should be done. Second, the entire storytelling style of the comic is pretty much doomed to failure. It presents itself as two guys "living normal lives", whereas what we actually see is a few conversations, with no setup and no context (we have no idea who these guys are or why they're capable of driving around for no specific purpose discussing philosophical ideologies). The purpose of the comic is clearly to present dialogues about particular issues. To put it another way, it's trying to present a debate - something that is, almost by definition, completely verbal - in an overwhelmingly visual genre. You have to be really, really good at writing to keep a reader's interest through pure wordiness.
So how good is this writer? Sadly, the writing seems to be the weakest part. Within the first episode, the topic of debate is brought up with one of the worst analogies I've ever seen, the participants immediately take views at polar opposites of the possible spectrum, there's no possibility of either being remotely unsure of themselves, and then within about three minutes of story time it is completely resolved. There are no apparent subtexts and no subplots. Worst of all, in what I think is probably an attempt to be "inclusive" or "non-threatening", there is no explicit mention of God, Jesus, the Bible, or anything remotely Christian, despite the site being called "The Book" and there being a link on the sidebar to find out more about Christianity. What you're left with is a bizarre, contrived and shallow philosophical argument, which is, just to put the icing on the cake, almost solved with violence.
I'm sure there are webcomics out there that deal with explicitly Christian issues in a sensitive, well-written and probably even effectively evangelistic way. I just wish that they were the ones that advertised on other major webcomics, instead of fatally flawed ideas like this.
Monday, 26 March 2007
It is brilliant work, but...another way to waste time?
One of the wonders of the internet (and of not having a vast amount to do, now that it's the holidays) is that it's possible to stumble across some amazing creative work that people have put online. Another wonder of the internet is that some people have decided to take advantage of this new distribution medium, even if their work is very definitely paper-based.
In particular, I'm referring to Girl Genius, a webcomic produced by Phil and Kaja Foglio. The Foglios have done a lot of illustration work in the past (they drew the art on several Magic: The Gathering cards, earning them a place in both the most successful and most horrifically nerdy game of all time), and in fact were producing Girl Genius as an actual comic book for some considerable time before making the jump to the web. The reason that the Foglios made the switch, according to Websnark, was that they reckoned they could build an audience much more effectively by giving away their work for free in an online format and selling print collections off the back of that.
Now, I will freely admit that this sounds like a fairly unlikely business model. The fact that it's so easy to set up a webcomic strongly suggests that the quality of the strip is going to suffer if its competition is suddenly "experimental" strips made in MS Paint or the fifty thousand "hilariously mismatched college room-mates" strips that you can find all too easily. What's more, the standard of work that you find in a lot of comic books (well, from what I've seen, anyway - I don't actually buy comic books, so this isn't really an authoritative opinion) suggests that people buy the next issue because they want to find out what happens next, meaning that collections are rather less likely to sell.
If people held such reservations, they were unfounded in this case. The Foglios have done really pretty well out of their new venture. Why? Because their comic is absolutely freaking awesome. The artwork is of a standard that just blows you out of the water. This is especially noticeable when restrictions are placed on it, to the extent that even though the colour strips are utterly superb, I was disappointed when they moved away from the incredible things that could be done with just black and white. (And, interestingly, things look a lot better when the comic moves effectively back into monotone.)
Seriously, I cannot believe that this comic is produced at a rate of three full pages a week. Look at a fairly typical page of Questionable Content, which is generally regarded as having very good artwork (and updates 5 times a week). Yeah, it's nice to look at, but it's just not in the same league. Then if you look at something which is much more story-driven, like Sluggy Freelance, the artwork is definitely taking a back seat to the story (which it has to, given the 6 days a week update schedule), although Pete Abrams can certainly handle a pencil pretty well when the occasion demands.
Of course, conversely, with so much time being spent on the artwork, it's natural that the story won't be quite as good. Girl Genius's storyline isn't bad, by any stretch of the imagination - indeed, there's some really interesting storytelling devices being used, such as the fact that the villains of the piece are multi-layered, intelligent creations who only sometimes remind you that they are also the villains for a reason - but there are also problems. For example, although I'm not about to link to specific story-spoiling strips, there have been deaths, both of very obvious protagonists and possible antagonists, which were apparently meant to elicit an emotional reaction in the audience. The pacing and the experience we'd had with these characters, however, meant that what was actually experienced didn't go much beyond "meh, that's sad". One feels that a little more concentration on the storyline would pay dividends.
That said, I must say, this strip is still rapidly becoming one of my favourites, and will be in my collection of RSS feeds pretty much as soon as I've finished reading the archives. It's also one of the very few webcomics I've seen that I would really like to have in dead-tree format, just to look at it again. Just so long as I can avoid spending ages going through the archives when I'm supposed to be working.
(Take a guess as to how likely that is.)
Tuesday, 13 February 2007
If you have work to do, do NOT start reading the archives
Over on Sluggy Freelance (for the uninitiated, Sluggy is a very long-term webcomic with a superb story and pretty good art to match), Pete Abrams has started work on another major storyline. This one is (almost certainly) going to be bringing back a major character who's been literally cocooned for a couple of years now. Coming hot on the heels of the Phoenix Rising storyline, in which another recurring character who hasn't been seen for a while (along with the main villains of the piece, who had likewise been lying low) made a very dramatic appearance, it seems that the overall story is starting to get properly exciting.
(It's worth noting at this point that I didn't realise Sluggy was a complete story heading for eventual completion until Abrams explicitly said so the other week. That's how long-term the storylines run - I envisaged it as a kind of eternal framework in which the characters continue to have their weird adventures ad infinitum. Having an overall framework is a much better idea.)
Anyway, because of the pace at which the story runs, this chapter began with a few days of recapping where the characters were and what they were doing, before launching us into the action six days ago.
And then yesterday, a little notice from Abrams appeared at the top of the strip saying that he'd got emails complaining how the storyline was slow-moving and that nothing was happening.
I'd remind you at this point that Sluggy publishes six days a week, and continues throughout the entire year (barring the odd filler week here and there). That's a serious amount of material.
And yet, within five days of the start of this particular storyline, enough people are whining that nothing is happening that Abrams has to put a notice on the main page just to placate them. Sure, we get a countdown to something that will spark off more action, which is all well and good - but really, people, there's such a thing as pacing a story well, and that's exactly what he's doing. Give the man a break.
Sunday, 21 January 2007
Picture of the Week: #3
It's Sunday once again, so we all know what that means...yes, I get up hideously early while everyone else is still asleep. But it also means that you get to marvel at this 'ere picture.
It may not have been the best idea to set up a mini-trampoline in the kitchen. However, once you put some jive music on, it becomes surprisingly difficult to avoid using it, as Becky conveniently demonstrates.
Couple of extra things to say, but because I'm not going to make separate posts just for that, you'll have to go behind the cut. If this doesn't work, go and enable Javascript in your browser. It is not difficult.
If all has gone according to plan, you are now reading the expanded post. So, hello! The two things to say are:
This cartoon is by Dave Walker, and as such is not covered by my CC licence.
You can click the image (and please do so) to go and have a look at the rest of this guy's stuff...very clear Edward Monkton influence, but often with a Christian spin, and he makes a lot of them freely available for blogs. Which can't be a bad thing.
