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We're on a mission from God


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#1 Guest_Oyster Girl_*

Posted 09 April 2012 - 01:52 PM

We've joked for years about how incompetent Carrie Fisher's Mystery Woman is in the Blues Brothers. It finally hit me last night that there's a story reason for her string of failures: divine intervention. (It was so in line with classic slapstick that I never thought beyond that.)

Which led me to realize that the movie is, in some basic ways, the same story as the Curse of Chalion. Chalion probes the theme more deeply that a movie can, but they kick into gear at the same place (consciously accepting the call) and eventually come to the same question: "What did gods do with used saints?"

Chalion, of course, does not set any records for number of cars crashed. (103 according to Guinness.)

#2 Guest_VigaHrolf_*

Posted 09 April 2012 - 02:09 PM

OG,

I think humanity has come up with only a couple of stories (Hero's Journey, Tale of Redemption, Star Crossed Lovers, The Gods Make Fools of Men's Fate, etc) and that we've been retelling them for millenia, just finding new tweaks and spins and variations or just updating them to modern times. In fact, that's most of the fun.

As to the story in question - I never made that connection before, but damn if it doesn't fit. She's not incompetent, just thwarted by the gods themselves. :D And you mentioning that just adds another layer of depth to an already incredibly deep Hero's Journey story. Because, as they say - they are on a Mission From God. How else could they thwart the entire CPD for just long enough to do the Lord's work?

#3 Guest_Oyster Girl_*

Posted 09 April 2012 - 04:00 PM

I think humanity has come up with only a couple of stories (Hero's Journey, Tale of Redemption, Star Crossed Lovers, The Gods Make Fools of Men's Fate, etc) and that we've been retelling them for millenia, just finding new tweaks and spins and variations or just updating them to modern times. In fact, that's most of the fun.

That was kind of my point. :lol:

20 Master Plots: And How to Build Them

As to the story in question - I never made that connection before, but damn if it doesn't fit. She's not incompetent, just thwarted by the gods themselves. :D And you mentioning that just adds another layer of depth to an already incredibly deep Hero's Journey story. Because, as they say - they are on a Mission From God. How else could they thwart the entire CPD for just long enough to do the Lord's work?

CPD? Pikers. It's the Illinois State Patrol who are so determined to get them that they set up a roadblock in Wisconsin.

Chalion is well worth reading and dissecting, IMO. I've never been so humbled. I'm still divided on whether it should have lost the Hugo to American Gods.

#4 Guest_AlphaMonkey_*

Posted 09 April 2012 - 05:48 PM

Actually, the record's been surpassed. I was watching Top Gear and they had Sienna Miller on as the celebrity guest. She mentioned that G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra took the record. They smashed about 112 or so.

Shame.

#5 Guest_Coutelier_*

Posted 09 April 2012 - 05:58 PM

Actually, the record's been surpassed. I was watching Top Gear and they had Sienna Miller on as the celebrity guest. She mentioned that G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra took the record. They smashed about 112 or so.


I don't really remember a lot of car smashing in G.I Joe, but I never got into watching it since the whole thing was just a disgusting and tasteless parody of Team America.

Edited by Coutelier, 09 April 2012 - 06:11 PM.


#6 Guest_VigaHrolf_*

Posted 09 April 2012 - 07:20 PM

Chalion is well worth reading and dissecting, IMO. I've never been so humbled. I'm still divided on whether it should have lost the Hugo to American Gods.


Really? That is high praise, at least considering how much I enjoyed American Gods.

#7 Guest_Blue-Inked_Frost_*

Posted 09 April 2012 - 07:52 PM

Cool topic! :)

There's also the more obvious/famous ones, like The Lion King and Hamlet (and Kimba the White Lion), Clueless/Emma, 10 Things I Hate About You/Taming of the Shrew. I was pretty impressed by The Stars My Destination as a science fiction novel, and that's a retake of the revenge saga like The Count of Monte Cristo in terms of plot. I was less than impressed with The Magicians as a commentary on Narnia and Harry Potter--I thought it was too derivative, without much of a voice of its own, and failed to match either of them for excitement value.

I also think it can be easy to shoehorn a lot of stories into The Hero with a Thousand Faces, though I've also read some of the criticisms of it.

One of the reasons why I enjoy Baldur's Gate is because BG1 is a bildungsroman--I enjoy those kinds of stories, a young character trying to make their place in the world.

Edited by Blue-Inked_Frost, 09 April 2012 - 07:53 PM.


#8 Guest_Oyster Girl_*

Posted 09 April 2012 - 11:18 PM

Actually, the record's been surpassed. I was watching Top Gear and they had Sienna Miller on as the celebrity guest. She mentioned that G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra took the record. They smashed about 112 or so.

Shame.

Yeah, Blues Brothers held the record until 1998, when Blues Brothers 2000 smashed 104 cars. Then, GIJoe. Still, almost 20 years is a good long time to hold a record.


Chalion is well worth reading and dissecting, IMO. I've never been so humbled. I'm still divided on whether it should have lost the Hugo to American Gods.

Really? That is high praise, at least considering how much I enjoyed American Gods.

Gaiman deserved it, no question, but Chalion is currently my second favorite book of all time. My favorite is its sequel, Paladin of Souls, which did win Bujold her fourth Best Novel Hugo (she also has one for Best Novella). There are some complaints about the pacing in both books, but for the most part, she follows Vonnegut's Rule 4: "Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action." She works in a tight third person POV, so even the descriptions of the world around her characters reveal character.

#9 Guest_Clight_*

Posted 29 May 2012 - 11:21 AM

I keep seeing the claim that there are only X basic plots, and it seems to make sense... But I'll be danged if I've ever seen a believable analysis of how it works. The few times there's actually been a list, they've seemed, well, parochial.

#10 Guest_Blue-Inked_Frost_*

Posted 29 May 2012 - 11:51 AM

Probably depends on whether you have the sort of mind that likes categorisation and simplification or not. :) Nothing wrong with either.

You try sorting all the BG characters into the melancholic/choleric/sanguine/phlegmatic model, and you get a lot that can be shoved neatly inside one of the boundaries. Or pin Charname's saga into the Hero's Journey.

On an even more basic level, stories have introduction/complication/resolution; or even sentences have subject/verb/object. I can fit lots of things into these seven basic: defeating Sarevok is overcoming a monster; growing in levels and power is rags to riches; Lilacor is the Quest; voyage out and back to Candlekeep is in BG1; comedy is Cyrando and Irlana; tragedy is you-pick-an-antagonist-backstory or evil Bhaalspawn; rebirth is Sarevok's return. Or King Lear's about tragedy; or Twilight's a 'comedy' in the sense that although it's deadeningly tedious and unfunny it's about two people getting romantically together, even if they make the world and each other miserable the rest of their unlife; the Left Behind series is about overcoming the monster in the sense of watching divine intervention do all the work while the protagonists lay around and congratulate themselves; or The Handmaid's Tale and 1984 are about witnessing the downward spiral of entire countries and regions in broader tragedies.

But you can question how helpful this is as a form of analysis; a summary that spoils the ending shouldn't be more fun to read than the whole book (and if it is, the author's not doing it right). Simplification is an analytical tool that can be helpful or can be non-helpful. If you wanted, you could roll dice on TV Tropes and decide to write a novel that has a Moving The Goalposts plot, a Forgiveness Requires Death subplot, and stars a gender-swapped Magic Pixie Dream Guy and Female Galley Slave in the lead roles. Maybe that would inspire you to worldbuild and write and flesh out characters and plot from that brief inspiration--or more likely not.

#11 Guest_Clight_*

Posted 29 May 2012 - 12:21 PM

What bothers me about all this is that they're just tropes, which show up repeatedly but don't cover everything, when the claims made are to the effect that these are the only basic ones. (Possibly comes from the seven plots book and nobody having actually read it.) It seems you should be able to do a comprehensive analysis, though, which is why it's annoying I can't find one anywhere. Things like stories having conflict and a resolution and so on seem to come closest to such analysis, but I haven't found anything really satisfying there either. Maybe I'll have to do the analysis myself.

#12 Guest_Blue-Inked_Frost_*

Posted 29 May 2012 - 09:00 PM

Have you already tried Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung? Certainly more academic than TV Tropes.

I think once you design a reasonably exhaustive number of categories, it's easy to forcibly shove things in the boxes even if some of them need some edges trimmed off first. I'm not sure TV Tropes claims all they have are the only basic ones, though; they do welcome new "discovery" of tropes as far as I know. Most BG fics are about daring enterprises; but there's clearly some things arguably left off the list. "Slaying kin unrecognised", "vengeance taken for kindred on kindred", but no "vengeance taken for random civilians upon kindred"; or "an enemy loved" but not "a morally ambiguous character loved". I'm not sure what form your ideal form of analysis would take. :)




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