Comments by "Miriam Weller" (@miriamweller812) on "The Critical Drinker"
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Problem of Anakin's fall was, that the fall itself was much to quick and for the wrong reasons, that ruined it.
And Rey is even worse, because she GOT flaws, they simply don't mean anything and don't cause her downfall at all, what's even worse than having an actual "shiny knight" character.
A big problem of many female characters today is:
a) writers seem to think, that have to overcompensate and do not just make them strong - what often enough is at it limits when it comes to male characters - but even stronger, making them just to big to work anymore.
b) they don't just become the knight instead of the princess, they become princess AND knight.
c) even worse: they also become the dragon, because for some reason, when it come to such female characters, psychophath behaviour is seen as 'strong' and not crazy - what is of course an absolute terrible message.
Even if they don't go fully the road and the female characters is still just a side character, it's interesting to see, how those often start incredible strong, just better than everyone else, but since they got nowhere to grow from that point, they often just vanish behind the needed growth of other characters or are badly shoehorned in. At best, they just stay perfect from start to end - what is of course just boring.
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Never got what people liked about it. It's an awful place, run by a pretty totalitarian monarchy that is even more questionable than those we got in RL. The background means, that they were there the whole time, this super scifi nation and just let for example the colonialism of Africa and all the slavery happen without care. The whole cultural mixture is also quite odd. I mean, when you would do the same in Europe for example, long befor the industrial revolution, you wouldn't let them run around like Wikings or whatever, since something like that would of course have a massive impact in absolute every way, including cultural and set apart this nation from others in their whole devolepment over the centuries.
It overall felt kind of racist I must say, like "yeah, those Africans, they would stil be that way even with high tech and act like savages".
I mean, what would people say when you take the same in Europe for example and when that thigh tech nation wants a new king (why ever it would have a king to begin with) it's decided by a bar fight. Would raise some eye brows, but hey, it's Africans, they would for sure do something that stupid, right?
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@theunknowncommenter725 And that's exactly how you shouldn't handle magic. As a bad excuse to just write whatever you want.
Yes: you don't have to and even shouldn't explain everything regarding magic, since the mystical part of it is the fun of of it and the way for example Harry Potter uses it takes most the interesting part out of it, even more when further ruined by a childish story in which all adults are simply braindead (and for example something like a polymorph potion is treatead as if no other wizard ever heared about it and alike)
But of course, you, as the writer, should still have the concept of your setting and the laws of its world in your mind. What is possible, what Isn't and why, no matter if you explain it or not, but in the end this will make sure, that your world and plot will still follow the consistency. And it not clear, there is no problem with having a character come up with an idea and have some other character tell, why this isn't possible or too risky or whatever (and please without them doing it anway and that 1:10000000 chance still working because plot armor, that's even worse...).
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Female characters are often just powerfantasies, just having everything, somethign you normally make up when you are maybe 10 or younger.
This includes that everyone else is stupid even more those you dislike. Again: like in the powerfantasy of a little kid.
It's not even that stoic characters for example are a role model. They are often not good personw, with a hell lot of failures and problems, who even lost control over their lives or are outright broken. But then they still stand up and do what has to be done, not because the world bends around them and gives them what they want, but by fighting for it.
That's what makes the characters interesting. You don't really want to be them, but they can be an inspiration.
People come up with anime or whatever to touch you "never give up", but those heroes you got there are just chosen from the start, massively increase in power and the sheer wish to the best makes them the best in the end. That's not message, that just nonsense and people should be thankful for that, because if wishful thinking would be able to do that, this planet would be even more in the dumpster.
The stoic hero isn't like that. The stoic hero knows his place and that it isn't a good one, that the odds are against him and that going through with it would not be rewardful, no joy, just more pain - and is still doing it, because it's right (if it wouldn't be right, he wouldn't be stoic, but a psychopath...).
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It's one of the ore jokes of the "strong character", which just starts at the top so overall you simply can't do much to make them look actually competent, because then you would have left no plot at all.
They are powerful, educated and act smart? Well, congrats you got an Utopia where nothing bad happens thanks to such wonderful characters.
If they at least would got with this - you actually COULD write a story around that for example that even such a god or goddess could be unable to stop all that fear and greed inside humans which will very likely go against such power, even if it never did anything bad to them in contrary.
But that's not what such "powerful characters" are about. So they just start there, already at the top, but since you got that standard boring plot, well, they are forced to be idiots.
And it's not just the powerful protagonists, powerful antagonists also got the same problem.
Overall, what is even worse than a strong protagonists is a weak protagonists put against powerful antagonists and still succeeds for no fucking reason, because everyone else, including the antagonists are dumb and they got the plot armor making them succeed not matter what dumb shit they do.
In general this is always the same problem:
An author just absuing his or her omnipotent power over their universe to make happen whatever they want without a single care to give it a reason.
It's simply lazy. Way more about laziness than incompetence, because especially when you work in a team, you can't be that incompetent to write such garbage.
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What I hate the most about how women in war is sold is, as if fighting in a war is a privileg, a glorious carreer, something everyone wants to be, to become that hero, while in reality, to be in a war is just living hell and soldiers are lambs sacrificed on the altaras of insanity for the greed of evil people - or against the greed and all it has caused.
That an army can't work, when you can't trust the person close to you and its physical abilities just adds up to this. Yes, of course women can fight, too. In WW2, those german soldier who survived tell you with tearas in their eyes, that when they finally managed to get past that FLAK cannon that had been used to shred the comrades at their side, that the soldiers they had killed there had been women - who simply fought against an army that was there to annihilate all of them. Women can fight and did fight in history - and there was NEVER anything glorious about it, as it wasn't for the endless millions of men who were just thrown away as if their life got no worth at all.
When a tourist visited the SU after the 2.WW and saw many, many, many women doing all kind of typical male jobs there, he asked, where the men are who should do these jobs. The guide, also a woman, told them: "They died, freeing you from fascism." Not a story. Reality.
To sell war, fighting in wars, killing in wars, dying in wars as heroic, it's the most ugly part and even more when you then put a pretty female in there, looking like a model, who just gloriously slaughters through enemy lines with all rule of cool BS.
I got nothing against action movies, but there is a difference between some cheap entertainment and propaganda...
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I don't get the whole "evil cliche soldiers" part in the first place. For what? Even more, because they clearly don't even act like well trained soldiers, more like some guys you hired in a bar.
I also just hate when they throw around with scifi technology, but completely random.
For example: when you got ultra high tech drones which can easily build you a city, guess what you also will have? Ultra high tech hunting drone swarmes, which will wipe out whatever you want. Or you just use one of those nuke level flamethrowers shown at the start. Good luck escaping thos things, which just obliterate everything in 10+ miles radius.
Also:
1. What's the point to flee the forest tribe, when you just carry the same problem to that sea people tribe?
2. Why the fuck care for the sae people tribe, when you can just torture the forest people tribe - as if he wouldn't combe back, when they start doing this.
3. When you got a whole freaking army around including a general around, why the fuck go with some stupid whale hunters?
By the way: Why not just armor your stuff enough that freaking arrows can't penetrate it. I mean, really, it's arrows. Even if it's bigger arrows, it's not compareable to enough a firearm can do.
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Just focus on the meaninful dialogs to establish the charaters - and not random nonsense. You can have some of that to flesh out the character more, but the focus have to be to show(!) who they are. Even when you got a manipulator, then your focus must be on the manipulation, even if you only reveal it later, but people must be able to think back to the scenes with that character and realise, how he manipulated the people around him or her into making them do what he/she wants. Acting trustworthy. Friendly. Not suspicious, not for example pushing odd solutions going in a very strange direction without ever be questioned. A manipulator would look at something and ask an innocent questions - making the solution he wants appear in the head of the manipulated, indirectly, without mentioning it themselves. Or they would manipulate others to bring it in, to not be the direct targer of possibe suspicion. For example manipulate dwarves into bringing things up.
It would be fine, when the audience think, that you can't trust that dwarf, since he seems to be greedy and tried way too much into going into a very specific direction. But that's the point, this is exactly how manipulation would work. Distraction. The manipulator got no problem with people hating on that dwarf, he would likely be the one pushing it and even rightfully, since th dwarf could indeed be greedy and by that was so easily manipulated into unvoluntary helping the manipulator. He would end up as a victim and the audience might even cheer about it, as will be the protagonists, having won against such evil - just to follow exactly another evil's plan, blinded by their arrogance about how smart and powerful they are.
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They should have cut out that romance, it was more annoying than anything else, especially how she acted. HE broke his back, almost died, lost his job and fell into a brutal depression and she acts as if it was the other way around and he just dropped her and even tortures him further for her personal amusement/"revenge".
Meanwhile it's not even clear what ever she did beside being a pretty female, but that's enough for him to fall on his knees before her as if she are a goddess.
It got better at least, but in the end: why? Why wast so much time on that to begin with?
Also why even the whole start, when it's pretty clear how much in love he's still with her, instantly going back as soon as she calls (at least he thinks he's doing that), while she plays the little, pissed of child for a while, but in the end also still loved him anyway and was just a feminist "I need no man" rage trip.
And that is stealing so much time in a movie that overall clearly doesn't take itself seriously anyway and should be all about stupid fun.
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Well, stoicism is how society wants men to behave - keep their mouth shut, do the job with no care for themselves.
It's an odd thing, neither just bad nor good. It's of course good to take up a challenge, do the job, but the abuse of it, to reduce people, male people to tools who don't value especially their own life is also a very, very deep hole.
This said: that's also what make the stoic characters in movies interesting, because they simply aren't the super hero who is easily solving the problem, they often DROWN in all the problems, which incluids their stoic behaviour, they struggle, are broken, got nothing left - it still stand up, often doing the right thing.
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It's a big problem with many fantasy writing (and super heroes are in the end just that: fantasy, not even something like Iron Man got anything halfway scientific left - beside the whole problem, that you don't solve a single problem by just blowing stuff up). Maybe Batman gets close enough, since in the end he's still a human being, though as soon as you combine that with other DC heroes on fantasy level, this also quickly becomes absurd. Same for other on that level like Captain America, who in the ened is simply a human with a bit more strength and stamina.
Powerlevel are all over the place and the sole reason it worked a bit better with Marvel is simply them making it mor cartoonish than DC did, though all the massive problems since start were ignoreable enough for many viewers.
In the end: it did not even get much worse. It's still the same problem since start, writers just give a fuck to actually spend any effort into creating a halfway working story line with good protagonists AND antagonists who both use what the got to reach their goal.
Even the Avengers movies were in the end pretty garbage from the start.
Those alien armies were always a joke, pretty much every single antagonists an absolute idiot, their plans never making any sense and when the last Avengers movie just use an absolute ass-pulled version of time travel in the absolute worst you can use the already questionable concept of time travel = to just solve all your problem, hell, in comparison to that even that Universe of Madness movie made much more sense, becasue as stupid as the reason for the shitshow of Scarlet Witch had been, you could explain it with the book making her stupid evil. Doesn't really make the movie any better, but it's at least better than reducing one of the most iconic MC villains to an idiotic brute so the protagonists don't even need an actual plan or whatever, just some plot armor time travel nonsense.
Why not just use the original? Was way more fitting, especially for something like the infnity stones which are a ridiculous plot to begin with (and their power level is also all over the place, even inside the same movie...).
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