#first puffin

The interesting part of looking far too much into fiction is that the more you do it the more that writing begins to look like more than just a temporary distraction and more and more like the art that it is. While rewatching Avatar the Last Airbender I picked up on a story-telling trick that probably goes over people’s heads much like it did mine the first few times and I love what it does.

Episode three begins to expand on the main protagonist Aang and the antagonist Zuko, revealing their pasts and who they are as individuals. As the episode progresses there is an interesting shift in not only how they are portrayed but what we see deeper inside them. 

   Zuko, the bad guy, is full of anger and defensive arrogance while being supported by his kindly and wise uncle; Aang, our hero, is excited and happy to be returning home while his new friends Katara and Sokka are hesitant and cautious. Already they are shown as opposites.

   Immediately the episode thrusts Aang’s enthusiasm at us, untempered by his friends as they complain or attempt to prepare him for the worst. He forges onward to his old home, the now abandoned Southern Air Temple.

   The episode shifts to Zuko and the colour pallet is full of reds and blacks; our villain is angry and is approached by a man who is ostensibly an ally but Zuko puts up walls immediately and attempts to turn away but is prevented from leaving. He is forced to be the man’s guest while being questioned about Aang whose existence he denies. 

Aang and co. discover a clue to his destiny and he gets distracted by a lemur which he chases throughout the temple.

   Zuko’s secret is revealed and out of anger he challenges his supposed ally to ritual combat. This fight doesn’t go well for him until his uncle’s advice and his own trauma kick in and he turns things around by pushing a fortuitous opportunity.

   Aang chases the lemur all the way to where his old mentor and father-figure lays, long dead and surrounded by dispatched soldiers. This shock sends him into a mindless rage and while Katara is able to bring him out of it, it is a sad moment that raises concerns for his future.

   Zuko wins the match and shares an unexpectedly tender moment with his uncle.

So what is it that I’m trying to bring attention to here?

   Well the episode contains two stories following the two characters, and their climaxes occur at the same time and each with a very different feel compared to what came before it. Zuko’s story begins grim and unhappy while Aang’s is cheerful and bright; hopeless verses hopeful.

   But after his climax Zuko is- not cheerful but hopeful, feeling stronger and comforted by the presence of his uncle.

   After his climax, Aang is feeling hopeless as his own power and uncertain future scares him and the presence of his friends only seems to help so much.

Those of you who have watched the anime will have at least an idea of where I’m going with this one, but Katekyo Hitman Reborn (Reborn for short) struggles with the problem of story escalation.

  Basically, without a sense of escalation a long running story will fall short. You know how Superhero comics, films and television often gets kind of bizarre? Iron Man goes from fighting terrorists to saving half the universe. Smallville Clark Kent starts off punching mooks with superpowers to fighting immortal Kryptonian monsters.

 Reborn begins as what is known as a gag manga: an episodic series where humour is more important than story or depth. But following the likes of Dragon Ball, Reborn eventually moves into the realm of action and plot.

  “But what is the premise” I didn’t hear you ask. Our hero Japanese 14-year old Sawada Tsunayoshi (or Tsuna) turns out to be related to the founder of a mafia group and naturally that means he needs to become the next leader. Reborn, the titular Katekyo Hitman (hitman home tutor… it’s manga, deal with it) is sent to groom him into the perfect mafia boss, and is completely unperturbed by the fact that Tsuna is both an idiot and a wimp.

 So once the story actually begins, Tsuna is sent to capture some mafia criminals (criminals even by the mafia’s standards) and while the villain, Rokudo Mukuro, has some grand plans, him actually succeeding at them is a whole other thing.

  Then for the next story, he has to fight a branch of his mafia who have equal claim to the position, but they are jerks and so he resists (also, he and his friends would be murdered if he didn’t win).

  Both of these are pretty low stakes, only really affecting the criminal world, but definitely escalating. So presumably the third story arc is something like an intra-mafia battle, right?

 Tsuna has to save all of reality.

 What, the fuck?

I’m not kidding in the slightest. The antagonist, Byakuran, has the power to cross parallel realities and has ruined all infinite of them (shut up! just think Crisis of Infinite Earths from DC) in an attempt at designing his own world. Tsuna and his friends have been dragged 10 years into the only remaining timeline in order to stop Byakuran. Should he fail, all reality is gone.

 So what’s the next storyline? Tsuna has a squabble with some more mafia.

 What, the fuck?

 The next story isn’t much better but there’s no point in going into it. The damage has been done.

  The escalation of Reborn shoots way beyond reason, before plummeting down to something more acceptable.

 But even weirder, it manages to work. The arc with Byakuran destroying the cosmos doesn’t have a whole lot of emotional depth, but unbelievably high stakes, whereas later stories have intense emotion. The mafia in the next story has a long but forgotten history and the members of which almost perfectly match-up or reflect Tsuna’s own friend group.

This isn’t going to be much of an article; it’s not going to ask any questions nor answer them, but I wanted to bring up an interesting example of visual storytelling in the Kingdom Hearts series. Plus I need to build up a backlog of writing because I’ve had almost zero sources of inspiration of late.

 So simply put, this example occurs in Kingdom Hearts 358/2 days and is when two of the main characters, Axel and Xion, become friends. That sounds a little cheesy, but this is the Kingdom Hearts series after all.

  Axel has been gone for a while, taking part in the events of the game Chain of Memories before coming back to find that his pal Roxas has been hanging out with the new girl, Xion. Any hesitancy he has towards Xion disappears fast and we see the same for her.

  Only in Xion’s case we actually see the moment she accepts him.

 There are a lot of unclear magic systems in the Kingdom Hearts franchise, and Xion is the result of Organisation XIII, who these three characters are a part of, faffing about with the memories of Sora, the series’ lead character. Long story short, Xion is an artificial being made using Sora’s memories in order to replicate his power, but as such she’s not a real person, even by Organisation XIII’s standards.

  So when these three hang out for the first time I noticed that Xion had left her hood up, hiding her face, even though in the previous scene she had it down. I assumed this was because out of some demure shyness towards this person she wasn’t sure of, but when Roxas talks to her, the hood is off.

  Axel speaks to her, and the hood is back on.

  Roxas speaks, hood off.

  Axel speaks, hood on.

 Every time one of these two speak to her, the camera changes and it becomes clear that when they speak the entire scene shifts to their perception of Xion, and because she isn’t sure of Axel the hood remains up. Neither Axel nor Roxas are aware of this and there’s a fair chance that Xion isn’t either.

  But when Axel drops the line “Well, if you’re Roxas’s friend, then you’re also mine” (paraphrased from memory, sorry), the hood vanishes between scenes.

 No attention is ever brought to this, it’s never mentioned again and depending on how much attention you are paying to the small Nintendo DS screen, you may not notice it either. It’s a needless but immensely meaningful detail that the makers added, showing both their relationship and that something is odd about Xion.

 This is just one reason why despite being a drag to play, especially on the DS, 358/2 days has always been by favourite game of the series, and Xion my favourite character (although I’ve also noticed a pattern of my favourite characters being young girls with tragic circumstances which is- worrying).

I wish I could find the post that influenced this article so that you know I’m not straw-manning their argument, but I only thought about it afterwards and cannot for the life of me find it again.

  But I do remember the gist of it so excluding what they said about Baby Yoda (which I agree with) here’s the basic idea.

  ((All of these fans complaining about how Rey had no onscreen training don’t seem to have a problem with Din using a spear he’s never been seen training with))

 But unfortunately for the poster these two characters aren’t comparable at all. I mean, just think about it: Din was trained by a warrior culture from such a young age that you may as well say his whole life, whereas Rey is experienced sure, but in using a staff against other untrained thugs. The two can’t really be compared.

  The reason why people complain about Rey is because of this: as far as we know she has never touched a weapon besides her staff and has never had formal training and maybe not even all that many fights to gain experience. We don’t even see Rey doing all that well while protecting BB-8, but it isn’t long before she’s facing down Jedi Masters and warriors, possibly Force wielding ones, who have specialist training in their respective weapons.

  Rey doesn’t have apparently any training before she is fighting at a higher level than we see Din fighting.

 Din Djarin on the other hand has presumably had intense training in any weapon the Mandolorians would have deemed important, and given his new spear is pure Beskar, something stated by Greef to be nearly impossible to find a smith who can forge, it can be assumed that it is an original Mandalorian weapon.

  However, we don’t need to make that assumption because we see more than enough to justify his skills. We see how skilled he is, his reputation and how frequently he has to test his abilities thanks to his action-heavy lifestyle.

   On top of that, while Rey is matching up to highly skilled and specialist Force using opponents, Din’s final match is verses a man without the Force, with at most a small amount of training in the Darksaber, and while wearing Darksaber proof armour.

  That pure Beskar armour might be enough to put him at an advantage against even a trained Jedi and here he is fighting someone who is basically just swinging wildly.

 I understand the complaint being made and if it helps, my biggest problem with Rey is the fact that I like her but she wasn’t done justice in the writing. Din’s fights are far better suited to what we see from him, but if he wasn’t trained his whole life and suddenly went up against Sith lords then yeah, I’d have the same problems.

Modern television could learn a lot from the Discworld series, and apparently so could the upcoming Discworld series from BBC America. How so? Well it will probably be in the title that I haven’t written yet, but they could learn about how to effectively introduce social topics with subtlety.

 I’m currently re-listening to Feet of Clay, the third book following the City Watch and more specifically, Samuel Vimes (of ever increasing rank) and I’m reminded of how I always intended to write something on how Discworld and Sir Pratchett deal with social issues. In the previous book he explores racial issues, with Trolls and Dwarves (who are hated enemies) and even the undead; Detritus the troll is teamed up with Cuddy the dwarf during an investigation and they develop a mutual respect; Angua is a werewolf who is obviously hiding it and has to deal with her crush who, despite otherwise being 100% accepting of everything, has an unexpected dislike of undead.

  The best part of all this is how it’s never the main point. Somebody is running around with a dangerous weapon and the Watch are trying to find him before Vimes leaves the Watch to get married (or really just before the weapon kills again). Exploration of relationships and tensions between the races is simply a natural occurrence when they are put together and very little emphasis is put on it. This is in stark contrast to, say, Dr Who where they sit behind a dumpster and chat about it.

 In Feet of Clay we have some more racism: Angua the undead turns out to be prejudiced against the lifeless Golems. We also get a new character in the dwarf Cheery Littlebottom and yes, go ahead and laugh, she expects you to. Cheery is- not transgender, no matter what BBC America tries to tell you.

  She’s a dwarf and she’s a female, and that’s it.

  And that’s the problem.

  Now I love this little bit of dwarfish sociology, but while there is obviously the two sexes, there is only one gender: male (or dwarf? it’s kind of irrelevant at that point). On a side note, this is why it’s so useful to have a distinction between sex and gender; Sir Pratchett could never have so easily explored this side of Dwarf society if the concepts were one and the same.

  Dwarves are all short, muscular, bearded and gruff; they fight, they quaff and they sing about gold, and they all go by “he”. Dwarvish courting is a confusing mess where they have to cautiously figure out if their partner has the desired genitals.

    Cheery Littlebottom is not transgender, she is just openly female. Well, she’s trying to be. The trouble is that the Dwarves are conservative as all hell so she’s struggling to express herself. Obviously this feels a lot like an exploration of gender dysphoria, but she’s not actually transgender and by our definitions she’s CIS gendered. When in Making Steam, the Low King of the dwarves, or Low Queen as it is revealed, makes steps to allow female dwarves to be openly female, any social commentary kind of dies out as Cheery is no longer fighting accepted social rules.

  The fact that BBC America has apparently tried to make her this beardless drag queen (and I mean that in an descriptive sense rather than derogatory) just shows a complete dumbing down of the message.

Given my unhealthy obsession with the Discworld series and that the books following the City Watch are among my favourite, the upcoming reimagining has been on my mind a lot of late. I can’t wait for January to come along, but until then I have little to do but speculate.

  I want to take a look here at the characters of the series, specifically the profiles so conveniently provided by the Den of Geek website and compare them to what we see in the books. This isn’t with a negative bias, insofar as I can unbias myself, but merely a brief comparison.

 Let’s do this in the order of main characters:

Samuel Vimes, “Captain of The Watch, disempowered by a broken society that’s reduced his department’s jurisdiction to almost nothing.”

  A very bare description but not wholly inaccurate. In the first book- Guards! Guards!- Vimes is disillusioned with his place in the city of Ankh-Morpork, drunken, sloven, all largely thanks to his Night Watch being a joke to the community at large.

  But this description isn’t quite right: Ankh-Morpork isn’t a broken society as instead it works. Under the Patrician’s guidance the Night Watch are largely unneeded, at least ostensibly; you don’t need to catch illegal thieves when the legal Thieves Guild will do a much better job of it for you. Vimes is a broken man, but only because he hasn’t found his place yet.

  Richard Dormer at least looks the part. I’ve seen official artwork that shows Vimes as neat and proper looking, but in the books he’s always described as “scruffy”. I don’t watch trailers so I haven’t seen him in action yet, but the worst thing I can say is that the decision to not give the Watch armour was a huge loss.

 Lady Sybil Ramkin, “last scion of Ankh-Morpork’s nobility, who’s trying to fix the city’s wrongs with her chaotic vigilantism.”

  “This is where the fun begins”. But really, where to begin? Why “chaotic vigilante”? Is middle-aged dragon breeder not bad-ass enough? In the later books we don’t see too much of Lady Sybil, but she does start appearing more, and the dramatisation can easily do this much sooner without issue.

  What we really wanted from Lady Sybil was a big middle-aged woman, which would be nice representation for that demographic.

  There’s not much to say about Lara Rossi in the role except that she doesn’t really look cut out for dragon-breeding.

 Carrot (Headbanger) Ironfoundersson, “the idealistic new recruit, raised by dwarfs, but really a human abandoned at birth.”

  Not a whole lot to say here. Carrot wasn’t abandoned so much as his family massacred by bandits, but whatever.

  Adam Hugill looks big, orange and handsome, and is dressed neat enough to pass muster. I’m looking forward to watching him.

 Angua (Delphine) von Überwald, “tasked with Carrot’s training and keeping the rookie alive.”

  Well, this is… well it’s the reverse really. The second book, Men at Arms, has the Watch forced to take in minority officers, and being a werewolf Angua is a shoo-in. She is trained by Carrot and serves to show the reader how the people of Ankh-Morpork view Carrot’s bizarre charisma.

  Marama Corlette is an interesting choice. Angua is meant to be tall and beautiful, with long blonde hair (treated with products meant for dogs), but whose werewolf side manages to come through in a disconcerting manner.

  Marama is portraying her as a short, scruffy character with very short hair. She’s going to lack the disharmony that makes Angua’s beauty so much more than fanservice. Still, probably not her choice and it will be interesting to see how she deals with the werewolf inside.

 Cheery Littlebottom, “the ingenious non-binary forensics expert, ostracized by their kin and finding a new home and identity.”

  Probably giving Cheery a little bit too much credit here: she’s skilled, yes, but she has to learn forensics when she first appears in the third book, Feet of Clay. She’s not non-binary, quite the opposite, but I’ve already discussed that here, and neither is she ostracized as such. Given that she’s not a unique non-binary individual but just a part of the larger Dwarfish sociological problem, I feel that they’re missing a major opportunity in cultural sexual expectations here.

  Going by pictures alone, I’m not even sure Jo Eaton-Kent is even playing a dwarf, but wouldn’t it be better to have an actual dwarf actor play the role? And I guess if they aren’t going to bother with armour then why bother with beards, but once again it drops a whole bunch of the nuance of the source material.

 Lord Vetinari, the Patrician, “architect of the city’s normalized wrongness and ramshackle system of governance.”

  Oh.

  I intended to say that Anna Chancellor had some big, big size twelve shoes to fill after Vetinari was portrayed by Charles Dance, but apparently that’s a non-issue as the Patrician is now fucking incompetent!

Lord Vetinari, the Patrician, “architect of the city’s normalized wrongness and ramshackle system of governance.”

Alright. I’ve had a little cry, and gone out to grab a beer. I’m ready now.

  The hardest part of about this is how it’s not technically wrong. The city’s normalised wrongness? Well, yeah, he legalised crime after-all; once he dies then the system of governance will be ramshackle as no-one else will be able to maintain it.

  I really hope this is just badly written, as the Patrician has taken all the unavoidable aspects of a city and made it work to become a positive. Unfortunately, it does look like BBC America has made Lord Vetinari less of a genius self-proclaimed tyrant and instead into either an incompetent leader, or a mob-boss.

 The- Archchancellor…? “a wizard, magical advisor, and the Head of the Unseen University.”

  So, is this Ridcully? Or just a nameless wizard? Because that does matter.

  Well, I’ve not seen a picture of James Fleet in character so we’ll see.

 Cut-me-own-Throat Dibbler, “the city’s best snitch, with a gang of freelance henchmen at her beck and call.”

  Um, why? I mean seriously, why? Sure, this works as nobody bar the beggars or Gaspode knows the going ons of the city like Dibbler, but snitch? Gang of henchmen?

  Dibbler is a hot sausage salesman with a knack for selling even his sausages (100% pig. not pork, but pig) and whose schemes for bigger business goes wrong because- well mainly because he accidentally always gets involved with the main story. But he’s harmless as long as you don’t buy his dodgy sausages.

  Surely that’s just as useful as a gang boss? And we know it is because it is in the source material.

  Can’t really comment on Ruth Madeley in the part, simply because the part sounds so generic that my beer bottle could do the job.

 Captain John Keel, “former leader of The Watch and mentor to Sam Vimes, determined to save the corrupt and chaotic city.”

  Once again, not quite accurate. Keel never rose above Sergeant-at-arms before he died, and transferred from Pseudopolis shortly before that without any apparent aspirations towards anything more than doing his job.

  I was tempted to say that Vimes pretends to be Keel in Night Watch which might be difficult with Hakeem Kae-Kazim in the role, but given I doubt they’re going down the time-travel route from that book I also doubt they’ll be bothering with that either. I wonder if they’ll give him an eyepatch…

  We don’t actually see the man, except as a corpse, so there’s not much to say about who he is as a person except for Vimes’s memories, so there’s not much else to say here.

 Wonse, “a wizard hopeful in waiting that is frequently underestimated.”

  A wizard only in the loosest sense in that he summons a dragon, but he’s actually the patrician’s immediate aide. The antagonist in Guards! Guards!, Wonse is aiming to put a puppet-king on the throne that he can control. Potentially there is some emotional conflict between Wonse and Vimes, given they grew up together with very different levels of success. I wonder if he’ll die in the same, grimly humorous way…

  Not much to say about Bianca Simone Mannie in the role, or even the role itself at this point. I dunno how charismatic she is, but Wonse in the books needed at least some, although that may not be needed here.

 Carcer Dun, “the wounded and wronged Carcer Dun, out to hijack destiny itself, take control of the city and exact a terrible revenge on an unjust reality.”

  Fuck. Where to begin. Carcer is- Carcer- well he’s fucking terrifying and not at all wronged; that’s why he’s terrifying. Carcer isn’t a relatable character, he doesn’t have valid justification, he’s just a monster who always has one more knife and will cheerfully protest his innocence while the blood on the blade drips onto the still warm body. Carcer gives me shivers exactly because he is so wrong.

  I have nothing to say about Sam Adewunmi except that I hope he has an innocent smile, because that makes Carcer worse.

  I’m going to pass on Ingrid Oliver as Doctor Cruces. I liked her in Doctor Who, but the description given here provides nothing towards the character.

 So there is a lot to say here, hence the reluctant 2-parter and my late dinner, but I can’t help but notice some rather worrying absences from this list. Where’s Sergeant Colon and Corporal Nobbs? Detritus the troll (who appears in pictures) and Constable Cuddy? Gaspode the talking dog or Foul old Ron, always being dragged about on a lead?

  How about Wilikins the violent butler, or the Librarian?!

I want to start things off with a question: have you ever been invested in something, a television show, movie, video game or other, and not known why? Something like “this is boring, why do I continue with it?” I absolutely do and want to explore this with you.

  See, I have a whole shed-load of things that I “enjoy” despite the execution not being to my taste. The horror video game series “Five Nights at Freddie’s” is not at all my normal cup of tea, the final chapters of the pseudo-horror game “Bendy and the Ink Machine” were disappointing and sci-fi game “Nier: Automata” is not what I like in my gameplay; but I bloody love them.

  Same with the “The Flash” television show, the “RWBY” web-animation and even the “Star Wars” universe as a whole. I continue to persist with The Flash despite being pretty sure that my brother dreads my running commentary of its flaws every week; I may not keep up with it but I do eventually catch up with RWBY despite its execution being…lacking, and I feel that nothing in the Star Wars franchise quite lives up to what exists in my head, although it stands head, shoulder and even waist above the others in this paragraph. So why do I keep up with these stories that I apparently can’t talk badly enough about?

  Cause I do love them.

As the title says, I love the concepts behind these stories. Five Nights at Freddie’s (frequently shortened to FNAF because, let’s face it, the title is a pain) is a game where you do the same few things again and again, all to try and prevent being scared; the gameplay is far too tedious for me to play myself and honestly, I’m too much of a coward to actually do so. But the lore woven into the games has captured my heart: murdered childrens’ souls stuck in animatronic bodies that are protective of other children and incredibly violent to adults? It’s so sad, largely because it’s so terrifying and there is more added to the story with each game, cumulating in a sad tale that actually doesn’t quite compare to that in my head (although put that down to preference). It captured my heart, and more importantly my mind.

 Bendy and the Ink Machine starts with a man returning to the animation studio where he used to work, where he helped to bring to life the game’s equivalent of Mickey Mouse (the titular Bendy) only to find that Bendy may have literally been brought to life by ink and madness (and magic). The game is beautifully unique in its design, with backgrounds and items and everything seemingly having been hand-drawn. There are tapes to be found that tell the individual stories of animators, voice actors and even caretakers who were caught up in the chaos, tapes to be collected while avoiding the demonic and malformed beast that was supposed to be Bendy.

 I’ll be brief with Nier: Automata, but this beautiful game with beautiful music explores ideas of machines and emotions and life, at least within my own mind (I never finished watching someone else play the game so I can’t say for sure). The Flash had my heart from the beginning, all through the boring soap opera drama and plot contrivances, just because I love the concept behind the world that it was set in. RWBY is much the same, although it didn’t have me from the beginning; there are little details in RWBY that could become something amazing, but that are unfortunately overshadowed by poor dialogue, trite characters and unfulfilling season-long “stories”.

 And you all at least know vaguely about Star Wars, but it’s the idea of the prequel’s Jedi Order that has me enthralled. I love the idea of an order of warriors, so feared for their combat prowess that they don’t actually need to fight; warriors who could kill you with a telekinetic thought and yet refuse to on principle, yet have enemies who share this power but without the same scruples. And Lightsabers. Lightsabers are cool.

  There is so much to love about Star Wars that unfortunately a lot of the media never seems to embrace, instead erring on the side of convenience.

 As an aspiring author I find all of this fascinating. FNAF and Nier Automata are examples of fascinating stories locked behind gameplay that I’m not interested in, although in the case of the former I do believe that the head-cannon that I developed was actually better than the real story (both of which I have forgotten by now). Nier Automata’s story may be better than my own ideas but as I said, I never finished watching the story.

  Bendy, Flash, RWBY and Star Wars are cases of poor execution though. Spread over five chapters, Bendy started strong but lost what it was that made the early chapters good, going from tense atmosphere to just hit everything with a pipe. The Flash tv show is a victim to its medium: it’s meant to be something for people to watch as they relax in the afternoon with drama, relationships and just a hint of excitement; it was never meant to be a superhero show like the early seasons of Arrow and they are so focused on what I just mentioned that they didn’t put the same effort into being consistent or even all that compelling to someone like me. Not saying that I’m a higher quality viewer, just that I want different things.

  RWBY is a real disappointment to me though, with the most important flaw being the forced climaxes without any real story. I’m not interested in the action when the season doesn’t seem to have led up to it and the best thing I can say for it is that each finale at least feels like a mid-season finale. But I will give it this: season three started (started) to change this for the better.

  Finally, Star Wars (primarily the cartoons) is a problem because it ignores its own rules. Jedi are supposed to be reverent towards the Force, not using it trivially and never to injure; watch any Star Wars cartoon that follows the Jedi and you will see them regularly and callously attacking with the Force. Another weakness would be the lack of rules regulating the Force.

  Any good magic/superpower system has rules or else there is nothing it can’t do and it would seem that there is nothing the Force can’t do. So, if the Jedi apparently don’t follow their own rules on using the Force then what’s the point of lightsabers other than as a symbol? They could crush armies with a wave of the hand; weapons can be torn out of one’s grip and enemy Jedi thrown through walls.

  Imagine a completely independent group who are such capable warriors that they never need to fight. They stroll forward and armies give up. So much can be done with a concept like this and to a writer like myself I would love to have free reign with it.

 And that’s that. So what would I do with these series if I had the power? FNAF is a hard one for me to give suggestions for because as I said, I’ve forgotten, but Bendy and the Ink Machine is easier. As I said the later parts became an action game with fetch quests that nobody asked for, so get rid of the quests, reduce the enemies and retain the disconcerting atmosphere. I’m not asking for anything the creators haven’t proven themselves capable of. Nier is another one that’s hard to give suggestions for as, as I said, I don’t yet know the whole story; what I can say is that it’s the androids and the possible exploration of their humanity (and why they are designed to be so- and I can’t believe I’m using this word- “thicc”) that has me so fascinated.

  The Flash is a victim to its audience so rather than an improvement, I’ll mention what I’d like to see instead: a superhero show. This may seem like an odd thing to say about what is ostensibly a superhero show but it’s really more of a soap opera (which, btw, got it’s name from radio operas being sponsored by soap manufacturers); a real superhero show wouldn’t defeat the best one episode villain yet off camera while instead focusing on character relationships. I mean, way to give a side-character the chance to prove themselves, but at least let us see it. RWBY needs to either give up the idea of series long storylines and slowly build a larger story up, or to better plan each series so that it naturally leads to a climax.

  And finally, Star Wars needs to set and explain the limitations of the Force; doesn’t need to tell us everything, just what it can’t do or if there are means of defending against it. If a Force user can block another Force user, then we need to know that so we don’t just complain about Jedi battles not being who can put the other through a wall first. And finally, I’d love to see people treat the Jedi appropriately, with respect and fear.

 So that’s it. I love these stories for what I think they could be, but what they are honestly puts me off. It’s a shame, but as an (aspiring) author I’m hoping that I can somehow use these as inspiration for my own (and most importantly unique) stories.