It’s been several days since I finished playing Hypnospace Outlaw. I recommend that you don’t read this until you’ve 1) Finished the game’s main storyline and reached the game’s credits. And, 2) Formed your own opinions on the ending.
This write-up isn’t to try and change your opinions on the game. It’s my way of getting my thoughts on it straightened out, and to throw a different perspective on it to pause for thought on. Hypnospace Outlaw is a game I really enjoyed and highly recommend to people who, like myself, have been looking for a detective game that really lets you think for yourself and doesn’t hold your hand at every step. It’s funny, it’s smart, and it makes you invested in the characters’ lives. And there are quite a lot of them!
However, the ending is something that (while not souring my impressions) really changed the way I interpreted the game as a whole.
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I've finished watching Folding Ideas' and Lindsay Ellis' video essays on Annihilation and Beauty & the Beast, receptively. And... you know that essay I wrote years ago about nitpicking in storytelling and the importance of CinemaSins? Discard it. Bin it. It is not needed now.
Katy's Everything Wrong With Bob's "Everything Wrong With CinemaSin's 'Everything Wrong With Sherlock Holmes'"
vvv Read more line here. vvv
Alternate title: Why CinemaSins shouldn't be destroyed.
Another alternate title: That One Controversial Essay That's Finally Going to Lead to Me Getting Eaten Alive by People on Twitter. Maybe.
Okay, so to get you old corks up to speed: Recently, there's been a surge, and absolute pandemic, of YouTube videos cropping up titled something along the lines of, "Everything Wrong With CinemaSin's Everything Wrong With _______", wherein the video nitpicks (their words, not mine) CinemaSins' nitpicks of a film. There have also been a bunch of comments on Twitter and YouTube saying that CinemaSins should pack up their things and hop it. To stop making their videos.
This is where I come in. And you reading this comes in.
It's hard for me to explain why I'm making this essay. Maybe it's because I want to play the Devil's Advocate in a contained, spaced environment. Maybe I want to give everyone reading this a different perspective on the matter; something to mull over and consider and take away before we decide to write something off as "bad" or "useless" or of low quality. Maybe I consider CinemaSins an old friend and I'd like to speak up for them, even though it's hard because I'm not used to voicing an unpopular opinion out loud, and I'm super-nervous about this. Maybe it's because I want to give a meta statement about how you can nitpick a nitpicker who nitpicks another nitpicker, and that continually nitpicking the next nitpicker will either create a wondrous nitpickception that we can all learn from, or spiral out of control into a lesson that nickpicking nitpickers nitpicking is a futile effort...
But for some reason, I've been overcome with a fierce desire to write this.
So, there you go. I'm making this now.
To structure this academic essay, I'm going to use an "Everything Wrong With CinemaSin's Everything Wrong With _______" video to make several counter-arguments. I'll be using Everything Wrong With "Everything Wrong With Sherlock Holmes" by Bobvids. (Thank you, Bobvids, for letting me use your video as an example. You're quite a trooper and a good sport! And I love your editing style!).
To add upon Bobvid's video's goal, this essay's goal is to nitpick a video nitpicking another video.
Nitpickception?
*cricket chirps*
Ahem. This essay's goal is also, like all my essays here, for educational purposes. Albeit, in a roundabout way.
To keep track of things, I'll add timestamps and quotes from Bobvid's video as I comment on them. I will skip over some parts of the video to prevent this essay from being over a hundred years long.
0:49 Bob: Why call them "movie sins"? One of the CinemaSins guys said it was "[...] because it's a more flexible & nebulous definition." But I guess they never realized "sins" has an extremely negative connotation. Of all the words they could've used, "sins" is the least flexible or nebulous.
Me: They're called "sins" because "no movie is without sin," as their slogan goes (the implication being that any film, no matter how beautiful, wonderful, and perfect it is, has flaws and should be discussed and acknowledged on some level. Because that's how future films grow as an art form. By learning from the past's mistakes). The word "sins" is nebulous because we all contain it, no matter how good or bad we are. He sins. You sin a little. They sin a lot. And I'm sinning right now. So it really is a flexible and nebulous definition.
1:14 Bob: Why have a movie sin timer when YouTube tells you exactly how long a video is?
Me: Because it's a reference/homage to the "gate" used in filmmaking. The "gate" is a black border placed around a piece of film or storyboard that lists the time, scene number, and name of the person who submitted the shot. When I'm animating professionally, I'm given a gate that lists these things, and every time I hand in a shot, I have to "check the gate" as the old filmmaker's term puts it, to make sure everything's in order. The gate even times the frame number (like the CinemaSins' timer and unlike YouTube's video timer), which is super important to include, because it makes it easier for a supervisor to give feedback ("Katy, could you please fix the foot-clipping issue that appears on frame 298? Thanks!"). So YouTube actually doesn't tell you exactly how long a video is (which is very, very frustrating if, like me, you like using YouTube videos as animation reference and want to scrub between individual frames without using an app like Reeview.it Player or Anilyzer)
Me: Here's an example of a film gate:
1:24 Bob: Why is the text of what's being said showing up at the bottom of the screen? Not only is it redundant, but YouTube lets you upload subtitles which is easier to do than premiere titles, lets viewers disable it if they don't need it, and also lets you edit text after the video's uploaded.
Me: Because, 1) the average YouTuber genuinely doesn't know all of YouTube's features, including toggling closed captions (seriously, I've seen several YouTube commenters complain that a person in a video was talking too fast, not realising that you can turn on subtitles and/or adjust the speed of the video. Youtube kinda makes it a wee bit tricky to find all its hidden features. Did you know that you can change the sub's font typeface, colour, and size? Did you know you can scrub through video frames using "," and "." but only sometimes? Well, now you know. You're welcome.)
Me: And, 2) Because YouTube's subtitles do not properly time (nor fit) all of its text onto the screen in full sentences if the speaker is talking fast or saying a lot, making the subtitles cut off midsentence. It is this for exact reason why it was so challenging and annoying for me to transcribe what you were saying throughout this video! And why is was MUCH EASIER for me to transcribe CinemaSins' subtitles in comparison (my typing fingers hurt soooo much right now). CinemaSins' method lets the viewer read subtitles in full and complete sentences, taking things in in a easier-to-digest way. They've also used it for gags where they change the font typeface or size midsentence to add emphasis.
Me: First image: Bobvids subtitles for CinemaSins (note how it's cut off midsentence). Second image: CinemaSins' subtitles (see how they're easier to read?).
Me: Also, why the Dickens did you subtitle CinemaSins if their subtitles are already in their part of the video? Isn't that hypocritically-and-ironically-redundant?!
1:37 CinemaSins: This film production logo is so ballsy I straight up have no idea what company it's for. But good job on being ballsy enough to NOT include your name, mystery production company.
Bob: That's Silver Pictures. You may know them from producing Weird Science, Lethal Weapon, Predator, Die Hard, Road House, Demolition Man, and The Matrix. They're allowed to have some balls.
Me: In all fairness, I literally haven't seen any of those movies you've mentioned (Weird Science looks interesting, I'll check that one out. I've now added it to my library list.) except for The Matrix, which I didn't really like due to its lack of humour and its tonal issues. So using a nameless logo really doesn't help you get more people to know about your company if they're unfamiliar with it or have forgotten what your logo looks like. So why do it? Pointless! Mad as a hatter!
2:25 CinemaSins: Robert Downey, Jr. is a handsome, fun, charismatic lead actor... who cannot do an English accent to save his life. Is it too much to ask that SHERLOCK HOLMES actually be British?
Me: I think CinemaSins is making note on "cultural appropriation," a prevalent thing in Hollywood (an American actor playing an English character), rather than literally how well an actor can do an accent. I mean, when oh when are we going to see a film where Simon Pegg plays Sherlock Holmes?! We're waiting!
2:58 CinemaSins: I don't know how good at deductive reasoning he is, but he wouldn't have been able to guess that that guy had a floating rib.
Bob: It's easy to guess considering floating ribs are the last two sets of ribs on your rib cage and are a natural part of human anatomy, which Sherlock is proficient in.
Me: It's NOT easy to deduce, considering the GUY IS WEARING CLOTHES, THEREBY COVERING HIS RIBS SO YOU CAN'T TELL IF HE HAS FLOATING RIB SYNDROME. Also, SHERLOCK IS CURRENTLY ENGAGING IN A FIGHT WITH SAID GUY. Have you ever tried to assess the state of a guy's ribs while having a fisticuff with him?
Me: Also, you used like the third Google image result that appears when you search "floating ribs," and I don't know how to feel about that, because I think you should have used the fourth Google image result instead, as that diagram illustrates things more clearly in my opinion (it shows the ribcage from the front, which was how Sherlock was viewing the man, rather than from the back).
3:21 CinemaSins: This guy seems to be late to the ceremony. He also didn't get the memo that they all didn't have to wear the hooded robes.
Bob: It's explained later that this is Lord Coward, who is using a robe to hide his identity.
Me: Yes, but WE, the audience, don't know that at this point in the film. So as we watch this for the first time, we're all thinking to ourselves, "Why aren't all the people wearing dark robes?!" Confusion that's resolved through later context is still confusion.
Me: Also, that joke made me laugh and reminded me of that absolutely ridiculous "robes scene" from the movie Dungeons and Dragons.
Me: And let's address the elephant in the room. No one like to be the one to yell "The Emperor has no clothes!" so please let me be the one to do it for you (and get eaten alive for it). The reason why so many people are jumping on CinemaSins right now in particular is because they did a Wonder Woman video. It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to see that the timelines add up.
Me: For those people who are like me who don't really watch American superhero films* (because we're too tangled up waiting with baited breath for The Adventures of Tintin sequel, because that's the comic book hero we grew up reading), Wonder Woman was a film that was well-received after what one reviewer described as "a long line of waiting apologies."
*Me: Footnote: I've watched The Incredibles and Batman 66, and I really liked those.
Me: Because Wonder Woman was a film that's popular, CinemaSins got in a lot of trouble because... apparently, people can't handle other people poking fun at something they like.
Me: Really, people. I'm disappointed in you. You're better than this.
Me: I hope I'm wrong about this, and people are just upset over CinemaSins' fact-checking. But one has to wonder why all the nitpick comments/videos started appearing now at the same time.
Me: Maybe I'm just weird, but I love it when people poke fun at stuff I like. Even my own work. I like watch LPs of my game played by others who are making cracks at it. I've been waiting for CinemaSins to do a video on one of my favourite films, The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, but to no avail. Even CinemaSins pokes fun at itself before other people did. But many people don't seem to be able to handle neither criticism of a work that is near perfect, nor laugh at a joke at the expense of a film they like.
Me: And, not to put too fine a point on it, Bertie, but that's part of a bigger problem.
Me: CinemaSins has a right to exist. Critiquing a video game creator's work is fine, I love getting criticism, in fact. It helps artists grow. But please, stop making posts and videos saying that CinemaSins should die. It isn't decent. And stop making comments like, "CinemaSins doesn't watch the films they cover." They would have to watch the films at some stage to edit the video together.
Me: Now, Bobvid also points out some flaws that are genuinely flaws in CinemaSins' videos (to the best of my knowledge), and that's something that CinemaSins can work on to improve and grow their repertoire. It is not, however, a good reason to have CinemaSins wiped off the face of the Earth.
Me: Just because I don't like something doesn't mean it shouldn't exist. I don't like something doesn't mean it should exist. I don't like strategy games, but I'm happy others enjoy them. I'm happy strategy games are becoming successful again.
Me: And yet, some people think that visual novel games shouldn't exist. Why? Because they don't like them.
4:46 Watson: How did you see that?
Sherlock: Because I was looking for it.
CinemaSins: Sherlock doesn't say, "because even though it's clear, it reflects light and is still visible to the naked eye."
Bob: Yes, you and I can see it, but that doesn't mean Watson was able to see it from his perspective. Watson was rushing Blackwood and wasn't paying attention.
Me: Due to the Kuleshov Effect, and because Watson and Sherlock are standing next to each other by the end of the sequence, we can assume that Watson can see what Sherlock sees in this shot. Crumbs, due to the magic of Prevalent Film Language, we conclude to this thought without even registering it on a conscious because of the way the sequence is shot (shot of object, followed by shot of Watson and Sherlock looking offscreen in the same direction = they are looking at said object).
Me: Also, I noticed you labelled Sherlock and Watson as "Sherlock" and "Watson," respectively, in the subtitles. For proper design unity, shouldn't you have labelled them both by their first names (Sherlock and John) or their last names (Holmes and Watson)? I'm nitpicking, but that's the point.
5:44 CinemaSins: Yeah sure. You're totally under arrest, but you can walk around without anyone holding on to you to make sure you don't try to escape.
Bob: This is showing that even police fear Lord Blackwood. Though I guess it could be a setup for one of your sh**ty jokeyjokes too.
Me: *Still sniggering from CinemaSins' gag.* *Pauses.* *Put hands on hips.* What's wrong with jokey jokes?! Even if they're afraid, they're the police. It's their job to apprehend this guy, so it looks ridiculous when they don't. It's reaching Thompson and Thomson-levels of police bumbling in an otherwise darkish action film.
Me: Details add up. If a film has a ton of tiny details that don't work, they can add up and wreck the enjoyment of the film (see videos that analyse shot-for-shot remakes, like Psycho and Beauty and the Beast to see what I mean). I know artists who have worked on Rick and Morty and have talked about meetings discussing the design of a paper cup that a character has to hold. A paper cup.
Me: I've seen Twitter people make the argument that films are not meant to be totally logical, and instead are meant to hit you on a metaphorical level (that's why Disney's Snow White works). And that CinemaSins uses logic and literalisms too much. But (at the risk of explaining a joke, which I don't like doing) remember that we as creators often pose a statement that we don't agree with to make our viewers both laugh and self-reflect on whether we are telling a truth or not. I hope this makes sense.
Me: Also of note: Bob doesn't censor swear words in the audio nor the subtitles of this video. I had to do that myself. Even though CinemaSins censors swear words. And both CinemaSins and myself have stated publicly that we're fine with swearing used in videos. We just censor them in videos/essays respectively out of consideration for others who may not like hearing them.
Me: It's also sometimes important to censor video essays in case someone wants to use the video in an academic environment, such as being shown in a film school class that has strict profanity regulations (for example, Games As Literature's YouTube videos have been known to be showcased in academic courses on Video Game Theory, which is why he tries to exclude any swearing or gore in his videos).
Me: While we're on the subject of nitpick-jokes, I'd like to take a moment here to point out that that bit where CinemaSins points out that in one of the background areas of a two-second scene in Kingsman has a paper towel roll is hung the wrong way is one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time. Seriously, I was howling when that popped up!
Me: Several people on Twitter were asking why CinemaSins was funny. While I'm highly, highly against explaining jokes ("comedy dies quickly under the microscope"), I can try to maybe go point-to-point and explain why their jokes touch the funnybone. I'll bring Powerpoint slides.
8:12 CinemaSins: While I appreciate the way this movie uses boxing to show off Holmes' superior mind, the idea that a reclusive, agoraphobic investigator would regularly participate in chaotic grimy street fights. Is beyond what my suspension of disbelief can bear.
Bob: Holmes' penchant for boxing comes straight out of Arthur Conan Doyle's original stories, so suspend that disbelief because people have been doing it since 1890.
Me: While Sherlock being a skilled boxer is indeed canon in the novels, many Doyle fans (including myself, screenwriter Max Landis, and co-creator of BBC Sherlock, Mark Gatiss) consider this to be a flaw in the Sherlock novels, as it often totally imbalances the foil relationship between Holmes and Watson. Watson is meant to be more of the brawn than Sherlock because Sherlock is more of the brains than Watson. Making Sherlock a skilled fighter makes Watson less useful. Because of this, it's perfectly accepted (and often considered an improvement) among many Sherlock fans to re-write Sherlock as being flawed at fighting (in BBC Sherlock, Sherlock is terrible at using a gun on numerous occasions, and fails miserably at trying to box the Golem in season 1, episode 3.) and even works that are heavily-inspired by Sherlock Holmes use this dynamic (Max Landis is the creator of BBCA's Dirk Gently, where Dirk can be taken down in a fight very quickly and is surrounded by friends who are physically stronger than him; and I am working on The Butler Detective, which has the detective character Mel Ambrose being physically weak in a fight, and Tuski Brown being surprisingly strong from buttle-ing).
Me: The following images are from Max Landis' Twitter account:
9:59 Preacher: You are sentenced to death for the practice of black magic.
CinemaSins: Victorian London was pretty backwards, but not that backwards. Were they? Were they?
Bob: Considering a [demonic ritual abuse] panic of our own happened in the 1980s, it's not that strange at all.
Me: Yes, but Reality is Unrealistic. There have been written accounts of farmers seeing cows spontaneously exploding, but if I had put a scene in my slice of life farming video game (The Journey of Ignorance) where a cow explodes, no one playing the game would say, "That's improbable, but realistic." They'd say it was unbelievable. As the saying goes, "Truth is stranger than fiction, because fiction has to make sense." If you want the audience to believe something that's improbable, you either have to create a fictionalised world where it seems less improbable, or you have to do what Fargo does and write a disclaimer at the beginning saying that the events are based on a true story... Even when that's not true.
Me: Also, ritual panic isn’t strange? What?
10:58 Bob: It's pronounced "sh*t," not "[BEEP]."
Me: -_- And you say CinemaSins does jokeyjokes?
Me: I feel like I need to add a swear counter or something to this video at this point. 0_o
13:27 CinemaSins: Pretty sure there would be a separate woman's jail. Right? Right?
Bob: Up until 1902, men and women were held in the same prisons in London. Quit asking rhetorical questions. And. Do. Research.
Me: What, am I supposed to crack open a bally history book every time I finish watching a bally episode of Jeeves & Wooster?
Me: Look, critiques come in all shapes and sizes. Some write in an academic style (Roger Egbert), some candidly (Jeremy Jahns), some scathingly (Ebert again), some focus on the editing side of things (Folding Ideas), the animation side (AniMat Reviews), and others write like they're a modernised version of a PG Wodehouse character from the 1930s (me).
Me: My point is, some critics, like CinemaSins, critique films as they are, as the film is playing, in the moment.
Me: You know. Like the way an average audience member watches a movie?
Me: Let them. And let CinemaSins. It's a valid method to judge a film. "It takes all sorts to build a world." There's room for critics who review films by how they captured people emotionally, but there's also room for critics who observe films on a more literal level.
Me: I feel bad about critics like who critically assess both good and bad films. They make me laugh the most with their snarky with, yet they get a lot of flak for it. One independent gave development team (we dare not speak its name, unless in hushed whispers by candlelight on a full moon) even went as far as to try and sue several critics for negatively reviewing their games. This attempt to silence the critics all led to... well... Let's just say that the Streisand Effect amuses me to no end.
Me: I know there's this dislike towards negativity and "caustic critics," but it's actually healthy to have a good whinge.
Me: If you honestly can't stand CinemaSins' negative tone, then check out their sibling channel, CinemaWins. It takes good and bad films and points out the good or awesome elements in those films.
13:50 CinemaSins: You might be thinking "Amazing sense of smell doesn't make a good superhero," and I would respond by saying, "Remember Hawkeye? He gets to be a top tier avenger and all he can do is shoot a [BEEP]ing bow and arrow."
Bob: Hawkeye has a hoverbike, f**k you!
Me: Having a hoverboard is not a skill. Shooting with a bow and arrow IS a skill. I actually have to state this? I mean, he could give that hoverbike to anyone with a compatible drivers license and they could fly it in Hawkeye's place.
Me: Or was that another one of your jokeyjokes? *Wiggles eyebrows.*
Me: Also, WHO THE HECK IS HAWKEYE?!
14:23 CinemaSins: Movie repurposes "old-timey" footage from Les Mis and Shanghai Knights.
Bob: Les Mis, Shanghai Knights and Sherloch Holmes all filmed in Greenwich. I guess it's a sin to shoot in the same location. Is this just a sh**ty jokeyjoke or a legit piece of criticism? I honestly can't tell.
Me: It's a reference/homage to Hollywood constantly filming in certain locations to do film shoots (especially Canada, due to its tax differences). You see camera crews filming stuff all the time and even handing out notices that give info on what film/show they're working on and how long they'll be there. I'm probably in the background of 257 different films and television shows simply because I'm Canadian.
Me: Canadians have very, very mixed, passionate feelings about being used to film American movies that are virtually never set in actual Canada, so I'd count this as a movie sin, yes.
14:48 Bob: Why are jokes about ejaculating allowed in these videos but cursing isn't?
Me: For the same reason double entendre jokes were allowed in 1971's "The Two Ronnies," but cursing wasn't: Because double entendre has a layer of subtext that hides its taboo nature from younger audiences (making it often "go above their heads"), but swearing doesn't. Unless you censor it in some way.
Me: The Two Ronnies' comedy sketch "Crossed Lines" literally has every other line a sex-related joke and it's considered to be a masterpiece of English double entendre. Check it out.
17:46: CinemaSins: The three main characters take down all-20-plus henchmen without the slightest injury.
Bob: By "20-plus henchmen" do you really mean six dudes?
Me: Hey, we're all allowed to hyperbole. I've been doing it like 50 times in this essay alone. :D
CinemaSins: Irene is just saying "and we need a plot for the next movie."
Bob: Would you prefer the sequel to have a villain that comes out of nowhere, or is teased a little bit? Do all those Marvel post-credits scenes with Thanos make you really mad?
Me: I would prefer a film to be restrained enough to not sequel bait and allow itself to be its own, self-contained story.
Me: Also, sequel-baiting is slowly growing to be a hugely frowned-upon trend in films. It can smack of the creators being over-confident that they'll get enough money to warrant a sequel (The Last Airbender film anyone?) and well as manipulating the audience in an underhanded way. People are getting upset over sequel hooks, especially this year (2017) with films like King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (which was revealed to be a setup to six more films. I kid you not.), The Snowman (which was planned on being possibly a franchise. Which is ironic, since the film is literally incomplete but was released anyway), The Dark Tower (which was meant to lead to a television series), and
Murder on the Orient Express (which ends with a sequel hook that, if you've read Agatha's Christie's Death on the Nile, creates a staggering plotting issue that I honestly have no idea how the writers will get around if the sequel does get made).
Me: I don't watch Marvel movies, so I don't know if Thanos makes me mad. Would he make me mad? Probably.
18:55 Bob: (Final Tally) Closing remarks: I have never seen someone simultaneously watch and not watch a film before. So thanks for that I guess.
Me: I've never had to type so much nitpicking-related stuff about a nitpicker before. Not since last Tuesday. So thanks for that I guess.
Me: No, really, thanks for that, Bob. This was cathartic. Genuinely.
Me: If people want to nitpick my nitpick of nitpicking and nitpicker who is nitpicking another nitpicker who's nitpicking a movie, please fell free to. Whatever you title it is bound to be hilarious, and I could do with a jolly good laugh.
-Katy
Also, here's Bobvid's YouTube Channel.
*cough*Shameless plug he didn't ask for but I'm adding it anyway.*cough*
Bob, you've been a sweetheart. Keep making your videos.
"I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it."- From Roger Ebert's review of North (1994)
Gee, I hope I don’t come off as too narky in this essay. This is such a big experiment. I’m so nervous about this ahhhhhhh--
Hello, and welcome to the Behind the Scenes article for my game, The Heart of Tales.
Quick intro here. This will contain spoilers for the game.
I've sorted this article into different parts: WRITING, ART, MUSIC, and the POST MORTEM. Each of those parts has different sections, and so on. You can skip ahead to the sections you want to read about.
Also, I'll refer to the player character by her default name, Hiro.
I tried to keep everything short, but it ended up being this long.
Now with that out of the way, let's begin.
=====WRITING=====
Inspiration: From Baldur's Gate to Tolkien
The Heart of Tales is inspired by various RPG games with medieval fantasy settings. Worlds where swords can talk, and you can take mysterious items to a shopkeeper to identify them. I decided to make The Heart of Tales follow similar "rules" to RPGs than to, say, medieval Fantasy television series. Because of that, The Heart of Tales is more eclectic in its nature (pulling from Greek Mythology, Arabic folklore, etc.--like many Dungeons & Dragon games) than historic or purely medieval European.
Some notable inspirations include the games Icewind Dale, Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, and Undertale. I was also inspired by Tolkien's novels and the German folklore surrounding the jester/trickster character, Till Eulenspiegel.
Icewind Dale
In Icewind Dale, there's a scene near the climax of the game where the main villain gives a big speech of how powerful they are. Like in The Heart of Tales, the player character in Icewind Dale has the option to reply to the whole speech with, "Woah."
Undertale
Undertale inspired the idea to let the player choose whether or not Hiro goes back to adventuring or stays retired by the end of the story. To me, it was important that the player was happy with Hiro's choice, so I didn't want to make the choice for the player.
Princess Maker 2
The line in the game where Hiro is rumoured to have been "born from the sky" is a reference to Princess Maker 2,
12 Kingdoms
The idea of a world or continent being divided by 12 kingdoms is a common trope in fantasy stories. In The Heart of Tales, I pictured that the continent is made up of 12 kingdoms, and the closer you are to the 1st kingdom, the more rich and upper-class the inhabitants are. The 12th kingdom would be the poorest.
Jester Till
I like bards. Bards are one of, if not my favourite, class in Dungeons & Dragons games. Neverwinter Nights used them to a good effect (meaning they have a balanced character build), but many other games overlook and/or don't include the bard class.
Till Eulenspiegel is a character who brings bards and jesters into the forefront of storytelling, by making the main character a jester.
Route Designs
I learned from Three Guys That Paint that having three love interests complicates things compared to two love interests. If you give the player three "A or B" choices, then the possible results can be three points to A or B, or two points to A or B. But adding a third love interest creates a programming problem: What if the player gives one point to each possible love interest? Then the game doesn't know what to do! And adding a fourth choice would add further problems.
That's the problem I had when I added Sareth's route.
I fixed this by making Sareth's route unlockable. The player had to pick New Game+ and that transports them to the "gift" choice, skipping the first choice. So instead of three choices, the player gets two. To add difficulty for the player, if they give one point to Sareth's route and one to Mithamoore or Cole, they fall into Mithamoore of Cole's route instead of Sareth's.
Making Sareth's route unlockable also implies that Aemza gets stronger and stronger with each playthrough, which is why he gains the ability to possess Hiro in Sareth's route.
Writing Process
The writing process was very similar to how I wrote Three Guys That Paint and Must Love Jaws. I started with a plot summary of the whole story. I separated the plot summary into scenes, and then I expanded each scene's summary into dialogue and narration. There were about 20 scenes total, and I wrote each scene in chronological order.
Then I took it all into Ren'Py and added coding like sprite movements and sound effects.
Theme: The Art of Violence?
Even though I've never been able to play any of his games (due to platform issues), I admire that Yoko Taro as a creator who makes video games that use the medium to help tell the story, such as giving plot explanations for the player character's ability to save and reload. The game mechanics have an in-universe explanation and the characters have an awareness of it.
In a video interview, he says the following (though note that this is an English translation), "[While working on the original Drakengard,] I thought about the meaning of "killing." I was looking at a lot of games back then, and I saw messages like "You've defeated 100 enemies!" or "Eradicated 100 enemy soldiers!" in an almost gloating manner. But when I thought about it in an extremely calm state of mind, it hit me that gloating about killing a hundred people is strange. I mean, you're a serial killer if you killed a hundred people. It just struck me as insane. [...] You don't have to be insane to kill someone, you just have to think you're right."
Anemza: Writing "True Villains"
I've also been noticing this change in storytelling, particularly in Western animation: More and more stories are having villains who are either:
a) Misunderstood and not really villains underneath, requiring the hero to "defeat" them through non-violent means. The hero instead has to show empathy and defuse tension when they face the antagonist (examples: Moana, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, and Steven Universe),
Or b) The villain turns out to be a character who was originally displayed as "nice" or "meek" and was thus overlooked by the hero (recent examples include Zootopia, Frozen, Wonder Woman).
At first, I was really frustrated with this; I missed "true villains" from the Renaissance Era of Disney and I didn't know what to make of this new trend with antagonists. I missed villains who had a lot of build-up and screen time. I missed villains like Megabyte (Reboot) that had a grand sense of presence. But then I realized why this change was occurring: It's important to teach people, especially young children, the importance of not just being brave and standing up for yourself. It's also important to teach them the importance of knowing that you can defuse confrontations in pacifist manner.
So even though I gave the game a "true villain" I also gave the message that for every act of violence, there's a consequence.
He's defeated because he couldn't have been changed: A person has to want to change in order to change.
Body Count: Is Hiro a One-Woman Army?
Hiro tells Cole that she's killed at least 447 beings before she "lost count."
To put this into perspective: The average kill count for the RPG D&D game Baldur's Gate is said to be around 1,500 for its full campaign. In that game, you are usually playing as a party of six characters.
Theme: Faith
I was very concerned about getting the romance routes in this game right because I think the romantic elements in my earlier game Three Guys That Paint were one of its weakest points.
So I realized that I had to focus on a specific aspect of relationships. For this game, I focused on the idea of faith in your partner.
Relationships are about sacrifice. It's about changing the idea of "me" into "we." It isn't just about liking what your lover is like. It's also about liking what you're like when you're with that person. Some partners bring out a certain strength in their partner.
The Meaning of 0451
0451 is a "Easter Egg" number used in a variety of games. Originally created as a reference to Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, the number is generally used to state that the developers of the game in question (usually an immersive sim like Bioshock, System Shock, and Thief) has themes of an ideology going wrong. For more information on this number's history and significance, I recommend checking out Errant's Signal's video essay on the topic.
One of the themes in The Heart of Tales is the idea that the main character is suffering from being put on a pedestal--and an ideology--that she no longer believes in. She is 0451. That's why during the climax of the game in Sareth's route, she says, "I am nothing. I am the fourth. The fifth. And lastly, I'm the first..." (Which translates to: "Nothing/Fourth/Fifth/First" = 0451). I mean, a lot of games in general are about a fantasy world going wrong, but I still thought it was an intriguing reference. An ideology crumbling.
Rejecting "Kindness Coins"
"Kindness coins" is a term used in visual novel development that refers to the "points system" often used in romance VNs. The player makes choices to unlock a romanceable character. The more choices they make to please the love interest they're pursuing, the more likely they'll unlock that route.
The term is not thought of highly and is generally used in a negative context: The implication is that, so long as the player acts nicely to the love interest and says what the love interest wants to hear (rather than being honest or properly roleplaying as the player character), the player will "earn" a romance with the love interest.
Which is a rather odd design mechanic, since in real life, being nice to someone to get something from them is not true kindness. And romantic partners in real life are often opposites who don't agree on some things.
In The Heart of Tales, Anemza tries to call out Hiro on her choices, saying that a few simple choices lead to the various routes she walked down. And if Hiro fights a possessed Cole or Mithamoore, they also accuse her of manipulating them. The game raises the idea of "kindness coins are bad"... only to reject it. Because Hiro ultimately defeats Anemza and wins the heart of her love interest, with little to no consequences.
This is because I find the idea that "using kindness coins makes the player a manipulator" is untrue, and that punishing a player for playing a romance game is rather... a bit much.*
It's because I find it similar to the idea that violent video games leads to violent people (which I think is utter tommyrot). People who kill in video games are not killers. They are actors reenacting a play. They are roleplaying. You may as well punish an actor for playing a villain.
The player in The Heart of Tales may be making choices to get a certain outcome (or they may not), but at the end of the day, they are still playing Hiro. And Hiro is the one who falls in love.
* (Footnote: There's only a few games I've seen that have managed to pull off this idea of punishing the player for their well-intentioned choices. And it's usually for playing the game a certain way, rather than playing the game at all.)
Hiro: The Difference Between a Grump and a Jerk
I tried to make sure that players liked Hiro, despite her wanting to turn away Mithamoore and Cole, as well as deceiving to them to try and get rid of them.
To me, there's a huge difference between being a grump and being a jerk. Hiro is written as the former, which I think makes her empathetic to players.
I don't like writing jerk-type characters, so that helped.
Mithamoore: Making a Likeable "Bad Boy"
A great irony with The Heart of Tales is that my last completed game, [redacted] Life, pokes fun at character archetypes found in otome games, including the "bad boy" archetype. Yet in The Heart of Tales, the tropes are played straight, rather than deconstructed.
I wanted to make Mithamoore intense yet likeable. It was a challenging balance to make (after all, he does begin the game wanting to kill Hiro). I think what helped was showing his vulnerability. He's unused to being human, and unused to reacting to feelings of romantic love.
I also had each love interest introduced one by one. I wanted Mithamoore to be introduced before Cole because Mithamoore is more aggressive and therefore would probably be harder to like. That was my theory at the time, but I've discovered that Mithamoore ended up being one of the more-popular routes.
Cole: Putting Heroes on a Pedestal and Hero Worship
Cole's character was influenced by the character Leo from Scrapped Princess, one of the first anime series I ever watched. Leo is a knight errant who struggles with the meaning of chivalry, as he gets torn between his duty as a knight and wanting to protect the main character, who is a princess wanted dead by the kingdom to prevent a dark prophesy from fulfilling.
When I was writing Cole, I wanted his character arc to be about overcoming his hero worship of Hiro. He's placed her on this pedestal that she can't possibly measure up to, and he has to learn to accept that and love her for who she really is.
Cole as a Fighter
Cole constantly quoting from the Knight Errant's Mantra was inspired by the character Double H from Beyond Good & Evil, who often quoted a fictional manual called Carlson and Peters.
His maneuver and defence names, Durer's Defence and Wallerstein's Codex, are references to famed engraver Albrecht Dürer (of the German Renaissance, who made many illustrations on sword fighting techniques) and the Codex Wallerstein (a compilation of three 15th-century combat manual manuscripts). Some illustrations from both can be seen here.
Cole as a Cook
I liked how I made Cole a good cook and made Hiro bad at cooking. In terms of gender roles, the stereotype is usually the opposite. Clinging to stereotypes just doesn't feel as believable to me.
"He Didn't Actually Blush"
I made sure that the characters never blush at any point in the story. Falling back to blushing as a way of showing romance is a big pet peeve among writers. I'm okay with others using it in moderation, but I decided to not use it myself.
Sareth: The Final Piece
Originally, Sareth wasn't a love interest. But after I started posting work in progress information on Twitter and Lemmasoft, several people lamented that they wouldn't be able to date the talking sword.
And the more I wrote the story, the more I thought about Sareth becoming a love interest. And the more it made sense. I slowly went from, "I'd be crazy to write this," to, "I'd be crazy not to write this."
So basically, I blame all of you for Sareth's route. ;)
Inspiration Behind Sareth
The biggest inspiration behind Sareth is Enseric the Longsword from Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark. Neverwinter Nights was the first RPG I ever played, and it's one of the reasons why I love RPG games.
Enserric was a weapon you obtained during an early section of the game (a dungeon created by a mad wizard). Enserric is a talking sword, is one of the most powerful weapons in the game, and had an entire, elaborate backstory (he was originally a mage who got his soul trapped within the sword and left for dead by his fleeing companions). I've also heard rumors that a side-quest was cut from the final game, which involved finding a body for Enserric before his consciousness completely disappeared within the sword.
Like Sareth, Enseric could taste the blood of the enemies he fought, and had a very inflated opinion of himself.
Anemza's Plans
Anemza explaining his plans on what he was going to do to Hiro (before he decided on his final plan) were actually some of the ideas I had before deciding on the idea I went with.
The Shopkeeper is Based on a Real Person
The ambiguously-gendered, mysterious shopkeeper is loosely based off of Ibn Battuta, a Moroccan scholar who widely travelled the medieval world, including Africa, the Middle East, India, Central and Southeast Asia, and China. He has been described by author John Green as "probably the most well-travelled person before the invention of the steam engine." During the twilight of his life, he wrote an account of his journey, referred to as The Travels, which provides a picture of medieval civilization that is still widely consulted today.
[images: Ibn Battuta and the shopkeeper sprite]
What's in a Name?
I actually came up with Cole and Mithamoore's names pretty late. While I was writing the game, I labelled them as Knight and Dragon.
Hiro's Name
Hiro as in hero, get it? Ha... heh... (sheepishly grins)
The following events happen if you try to name the player character these names:
Choosing nothing, or choosing Hiro/Hero:
"Her name was Hiro. And that should have been the very first clue. [name]."
Naming her Mithamoore: "Her name was Mithril. Named after the beautiful metal used for the armour of heroes."
Mason: "Her name was Morgan. Named after the beautiful gemstone from the darkest caves."
Cole/Caldwell: "Her name was Nicole. The name that stood for 'victorious people.'"
Sareth/Sword/Claymore: "Her name was Sara. It meant 'princess.'"
Anemza: (The music suddenly stops.) Anemza's dialogue goes: "I AM THE DEMON THAT COMES WHEN YOU CALL MY NAME." (The game proceeds to automatically quit.)
Shopkeeper: "Her name was Shoppy. A name that evoked merchants and traders."
Jester/Till/Bard: "Her name was Tilli. Named after the famous jester, Till."
Adventurer: "Her name was Farryn. It meant 'adventurous child.'"
Villager: "Her name was Mariko. It meant 'true village child.'"
Poop/Sh*t: "Her name was Showell. It meant 'to shovel.'"
Anti-swearing feature. If you type in some swear words: "Her name was Liliha. It meant 'to angrily disregard.'"
Dave/Davette/Ogu Pigu/OguPigu: "Her name was Davette."
Mithamoore's Name
I looked at Skyrim dragon names to help come up with a dragon name. I wanted something long yet easy for me to remember. ^^;
The idea of giving him the title of Mithamoore the Earthburner was inspired by The Hobbit's Smaug and his various titles.
Cole's Name
Cole's name was probably from Cole Phelps from the game LA Noire, where Phelps is a very straight-laced, follow the rules-type young detective. I wanted to invoke that feeling.
Anemza's Name
Anemza's name I basically came up with by doing the following:
Start with the name Jasmine.
Remove the first letter: Asmine.
Reverse the remaining letters: Enimsa.
Change some of the letters to other letters that sound phonically similar: E into A, I to E, S to Z: Anemza.
What really settled it was when I realized that Anemza sounds like the word "anemic," which can mean "lacking blood or warmth."
So yeah, Anemza is basically the name Jasmine put through a blender.
=====ART======
Inspiration
The Heart of Tales' overall art style was inspired by games like Princess Maker 2 (detailed illustrations with a pixelated texture), Undertale (giving each background a limited colour palette, and associating home with the colour yellow), and older games like Psychic Detective and Phantasmagoria (using smaller CGs in framed boxes).
Art Process
Preproduction
Before I start production work on any game, I create a folder and fill it with images I've found that give me ideas on what the game should look like. I've only learned recently that this called a "swipe folder."
Then I start drawing sketches on paper, and use those as concept art for the final sprites, backgrounds, CGs, and user interface.
[Image: My paper notes]
Index Painting
I used Dan Fessler's wonderful tutorial on creating pixel art through HD index painting.
Basically, the steps are like so:
1) Paint the artwork in Photoshop like you normally do, but using no colour. Only use shades of grey.
2) Apply a Dither layer on top using the Paint Bucket Tool.
3) Add a Black and white Adjustment layer on top of that.
4) Add a Posterize adjustment layer on top of that.
5) Add a Gradient Map adjustment layer on top of that. Edit it to get the colours you want.
I basically reverse-engineered Dan Fessler's Photoshop file that he provides in the tutorial.
Hiro's Design
I wanted her outfit to imply a bunch of different possible backstories, so I gave her puffy sleeves (bard), a tunic with light-coloured trimming (noblewoman), a tunic (adventurer), and a symbol that resembles the game's mouse (implying that she has her own personal symbol).
Mithamoore's Design
I'm not sure where I got the idea for his outfit. I wanted the outfit Hiro gives him to make him look like he values art, culture, and good craftsmanship.
I think I based his hair on Benedict Cumberbatch playing Sherlock Holmes. Which is ironic, because Cumberbatch also played a dragon in The Hobbit.
Cole's Design
Cole's armour design is loosely based off of Leopold Scorpus from Scrapped Princess.
I made Cole the tallest character and gave him armour that looks a lot bigger than himself. I like the "Popeye-arms" effect it gives him.
Anemza's Design
I wanted Anemza's design to look like a creature from another dimension. I looked up animal and monster designs medieval tapestries and manuscript. There are some really bizarre, amusing, and creative designs, so I gave Anemza the body parts of various animals. I made a conscious decision to make Anemza the only animated character, to make him feel more otherworldly.
I was influenced by Terry Gilliam's Monty Python cut-out animation, as well as the designs of the witches in Puella Magi Madoka Magica, and "Omega Flowey" from Undertale.
[images from Monty Python's Flying Circus, Puella Magi Madoka Magica, and Undertale]
I specifically avoided using rigging and tweening when I animated Anemza, to give him a more stop-motion quality. I animated the body parts frame by frame in Photoshop CS6.
I also programmed Anemza's sprite to "glitch" at randomized intervals, and in different ways.
[Image: Just a few of Anemza’s “glitching” animation frames]
=====MUSIC=====
The OST music was created by the wonderful Noyemi K.
I asked Noyemi to create seven leitmotifs:
1) A romantic theme.
2) A sad theme.
3) A scary theme.
4) Mithamoore's theme.
5) Cole's theme.
6) Anemza's theme.
7) Anemza's hopeful theme.
I gave a description of each of the characters, and I specifically asked for Anemza's "hopeful" theme to be a remix of Anemza's "scary" theme. Noyemi creating a "glitching," stuttering sound effect for Anemza's theme to give the idea the Anemz's mere presence is breaking the game.
=====POST MORTEM=====
What Went Right
The Characters
I'm glad that players were okay with the idea of dating a dragon and a sword. I'm glad people embraced that.
Portraying love
Ever since Three Guys That Paint, I've been skeptic and unsure about whether or not I could write love stories. The romances were the weakest part of Three Guys That Paint in my opinion, so I wondered if I needed to try again, or if writing romance just wasn't going to be one of my strengths. I'm glad that people liked the romances in The Heart of Tales. I think a lot of it comes from the love interests feeling more fleshed out to me here than Arthur and Terri from Three Guys That Paint.
Original Music
Working with Noyemi K was an absolute pleasure. Players commented on how much they liked the original sound track. I plan on working with Noyemi on a future project.
Persistent Data
"Persistent data" is a term I discovered while making [redacted] Life. Persistent data allows a Ren'Py game to remember previous choices a player has made, and keeps that information, even if the player reloads or deletes their previous progress.
Although I didn't use persistent data nearly as much as I did with [redacted] Life, I did use it for some of Anemza's dialogue (he notes that he knows about players' previous playthroughs). Many players commented on how they were impressed by that detail.
What Could Have Been Better
Getting Ideas Last-Minute
The pro to it was that there was less research notes I wrote that I needed to read through.
The con was that I usually like to come up with an idea and mull over it for about a year or more. After that amount of time, I have a better idea of where I want the project to go.
Here, I had to make quick decisions like adding Sareth's romance route and realising the theme of the central game was faith in others. Feeling my way through the story as I was writing was slower.
Coincidence
The Heart of Tales relies on a lot of coincidence (Mithamoore and Cole meeting Hiro on the same night, Hiro's companions finding the goblins, etc.). Avoiding coincidence is something that I'll have to try to avoid in my future games.
What I Learned
Ren'Py's New GUI
This is the first game I've made using Ren'Py's updated user interface design (I've tinkered with it on Eight Sweets, but at the time of publishing this, I haven't finished making that visual novel). It took a while getting used to it (and a lot of question-asking on the Lemmasoft forums!), but I've ended up really liking it. I feel much more confident using it.
The Three Act Structure is Good for Revisions -- Not First Drafts
An age-old question among writers is, "Is using the three act structure useful?" I think I learned during this project that you can't shoehorn the three act structure into your story. You just plot out the thing, and then you look at it and see if it feels complete. Our subconscious is so used to the three acts that your story will have them anyway.
But if you write the first draft of the plot outline and find that the story feel incomplete, you can go back and use the three act structure to find out what the problem is.
Basically, I had to do that for The Heart of Tales because of how fast I came up with the story for the game jam.
Le Morte d'Author/The Death of the Author
I think it's this game that taught me that there's a point at which I have to stop explaining things to the audience through social media. Either a player "got" what I was trying to say, or they did not, and I failed to explain or show things in a clear enough way. Or the player interpreted something in a way I didn't even think of, and I shouldn't take that away from them because they're using their own experience and viewpoints to interpret the game.
I see this as a fun challenge, because I know that the audience is smart. As Pixar's Andrew Stanton said, "Don't give [the audience] four; give them two plus two." I'll still answer questions if they're directed at me, but I also feel more comfortable to say, "It's up to your interpretation."
I also feel more comfortable letting the viewer "do the work" when it comes to interpreting a thing that can be interpreted many different ways. For example, I never give a clear answer to the hero's origin story. Was she a princess? A farm girl? A bard? Did she come from the sky? Every player will have a different answer to that question.
I think Davey Warden's 2015 game, The Beginner's Guide, made me think about this more. The idea that the player's interpretation often says more about themselves then it does about the creator or even the work itself.
Audience interpretation is a form of interaction.
We Don't Create Our Work in a Bubble
I've been thinking a lot about how my work affects people, and how work I see affects me. I learned that what I create is not made in a bubble. My own experiences and viewpoints affect the work. To paraphrase an old saying, every painting is a self-portrait. I feel like I have a kind of responsibility to make sure that my art helps people rather than hurts.
The Heart of Tales involves themes of the consequences of violence, yet the climax involves fighting a demon to save the day. I guess trying to defuse situations through talking only works if the other is willing to listen too? Like Cole and Mithamoore? Anemza is the personification of evil, after all.
It's also made me think about how time-sensitive my current and future work's becoming. If I made The Heart of Tales a year earlier, it would have been written a lot differently than how it's ended up now. And not just because I learn and gain developer's experience over time.
I know a lot of artists who have said that they are struggling with finding value in their art, or have completely come to the conclusion that creating art to change people for the better is a futile effort, but I don't buy that. I don't buy that because artwork that I've seen, made by other people, has changed me. And improved me. Stories have made me think about judging others by their appearance. About what it means to be Good, with a capital G. About what it means to try and follow your dreams. And stories have been doing that ever since I was a child.
Surely I'm not the only one who's been affected by art in that way...
This is a follow up to this previous article I wrote.
Okay, so I've been seeing several articles, academic thesis essays, Twitter threads, and thought-pieces on the idea that TV geniuses in stories these days are smart, and use this as an excuse to act like a jerk. Works like BBC Sherlock, House MD, and Rick and Morty were mentioned.
What's disappointed me quite a bit is that I haven't really come across a piece that suggests solutions to this growing cliche. There's been (really good and thoughtful) explorations on why it started and why it's problematic, but nothing along the lines of, "Dear writers, this is how you avoid this writing pitfall."
So since a lot of great writers have covered the other aspects, I'll try to delve into this particular area.
First, some ground rules on my perspective on which genius-type characters fit into this trope, and where. Think of it like a spectrum or greys, rather than black-and-white:
- I can't judge House MD properly. I tried watching the series, but I couldn't get into in. It's super-weird to see Hugh Laurie play an American when I'm soooo used to seeing him in Jeeves & Wooster and A Bit of Fry & Laurie.
- I still stand by my idea that Sherlock is more of a grump than a jerk. He's anti-social, and I think the world needs such people. Grumps are honest. Brutally-honest. No one likes to be the first one to yell, "The Emperor has no clothes!" * but the grumps of the world do it for us.
*(Or in this case, "The police are useless!")
To me, Sherlock's case is not so much like "being stuck in line at the cashier w/ someone using a check," so much as "watching a healthy person throw their health away (and burn their money away) by smoking. Also, they're smoking next to a 'no smoking' sign, a baby carriage, a puppy, a person using a medical breathing apparatus, and seriously, why is no one else but the grump pointing out thatthere'ssomethingwrongwiththis?"
Is it a feeling of superiority? Yes, but it's a feeling placed on a character that should know better. Not a character who is "just not a genius."
Maybe it's also because I find Sherlock's comments funny, so I give it a pass (I'm pretty sure everyone in the audience laughed when he shouted at the police, "Where is her case?! Did she eat it?"). I like to think there's more to it than that, however.
As an example of what I mean, look at his interactions in an early scene in the first episode:
- Calls Sergant Donovan out on her unprofessional behaviour.
- Also, she calls Sherlock names first. In front of Watson. After being told that Lestrade (her boss) that Sherlock was called in to help her.
- Sherlock gets frustrated that the police are acting incompetent. It is, after all, their job to solve mysteries. Sherlock volunteers and is not paid by them.
When your police are these guys, there's a problem.
I don't think Sherlock ever crosses the line into being a jerk rather than an honest grump, but that might just be me.
- Rick crosses the line. He's a jerk just to be a jerk. He believes that being nice is what "less-smart people do to hedge their bets." If anything, Rick's attitude hinders him because (if you think about this logically) if you're nice to a person, they'll likely want to help you back. If you're rude to the person, they'll try to actively brick-wall you (like, you know when someone rudely asks you for directions, so instead of giving directions to them at your normal speed, you try to explain the directions in the slowest, most complicated way possible in the hopes that they'll be late for whatever they're trying to get to, and then they hopefully learn their lesson and ask for directions more politely next time? It's like that).
I'm getting a wee bit off-track. Moving on...
- Henry (from The Book of Henry) also crosses the line. Folded Ideas did a great postmortem video that touches upon why Henry comes off as unlikable in the film, even though the film tries to establish that he's popular at his school.
Okay, now that that's outta the way, I can give some suggestions on how to avoid this trope.
Actually, I'll have to quickly give some reasons why this trope exists, and why it feels recent.
A long time ago--we're talkin', fairytale-era of storytelling here--physical strength was seen as a more obvious strength. So to teach children/the audience that strengths of intelligence, the hero of a story would be a trickster who used their intelligence to get out of a dangerous situation and/or solve the main conflict.
However, with the Internet and modern-conveniences, it's now actually reversed: Being smart is seen as more important than having muscle. Even action films tend to have the hero save the day through some sort of "trick," using a plan, improvising a plan, or exercising intellectual strategy.
So, how would a writer remedy this? Well, having social skills is also very important, so instead of making the hero "smart by physically weak," make them "smart but socially-awkward."
However, this became a problem when people started to see social awkwardness as endearing and likeable. Even to other characters. Adorkable, you might say. I think the breaking-point for audiences across the globe was Bella Swan’s clumsiness being framed as her main flaw. Being awkward became a strength rather than a weakness.
So, what were writers' solution to this new problem? What was the next step in the evolution of the archetypal genius?
Make them smart, but also a jerk.
Ah. Here we are now.
"I am not good at people skills, but I'm smart and that should be rewarded."
Oh dear.
Now, some writers have gotten around this by implying that the hero will become less selfish and more selfless as the story progresses. It's their character arc. Rick and Morty and BBC Dirk Gently are examples of this, but it raises a possible problem: What will their weakness be if they lose this flaw? Will they turn into a flawless--and therefore, less deep--character?
But until I see these character arcs fully come into fruition (and since BBC Dirk Gently was cancelled, that seems unlikely), we won't know if they'll feel flawless and boring.
With genius jerks, there's also this sense of theme. Something like, "Everyone else is a sheep. I dance to the beat of a different drum, so I'm better than them." Which is something that, as I grow older, I find less and less... charming. (It's also a mindset that I'll hopefully explore more deeply in my upcoming detective games.)
I get why it's a popular idea. And I get why I loved it so much when I was a lot younger...
When you're in school, you feel different from other students because you all have different tastes and are forced to stay in close proximity to one another for several years. You feel like the only outsider because you feel like everyone else is hanging out with everyone else. "Everyone else is a sheep."
But as you get older, you realise that just about everyone else was feeling the exact same thing at the exact same time. It now becomes, "There's no such thing as a 'normal, average' human. We all have a story."
There are still jerks and idiots out there, but you'll find that just because you didn't see a stranger as eccentric or outstanding, that doesn't make them a sheep.
Oh, by the way, the above is also linked to a cliche I'm getting rather sick of where a writer/character automatically thinks that if they wear a kooky/colourful outfit, that automatically makes them an eccentric character. I'm sorry, but just trying to copy the Fourth Doctor's outfit does not make your character have a personality like him too. It's the equivalent of designers who think that just sticking some gears on something will automatically make it Steampunk. As Sir Terry Pratchett put it, "It takes more than heavy mascara and a pale complexion to cross the divide."
The Fourth Doctor. Not just a colourful scarf.
Okay, okay, I'll try to stay on-topic...
Ahem.
Another problem is that the detective/scientist/genius/etc can only be as smart as their writer. That's why you end up with episodes of 2016 MacGyver solving problems in really dumb illogical ways: The writers probably don't have a bachelor's degree in physics and chemistry.
You know, that thing MacGyver is supposed to have?
I really need to write a review for 2016 MacGyver, it was so disappointing compared to 1985 MacGyver.
Oh, right. Back to genius jerks.
So let's sum up the problems of writing genius jerks:
- It can make the character insufferably unlikable.
- It creates the theme, "I am not good at people skills, but I'm smart and that should be rewarded," into the story.
- It creates the theme, "Everyone else is a sheep."
- It's becoming overdone.
These are the reasons why it's hard to avoid the genius jerk trope:
- If they're a genius, them need to have a flaw to counter-balance that.
- Being socially-awkward (rather than a jerk) is no longer seen as a true character flaw.
- Fully-removing the "jerk" aspect from the character (through a character arc) makes them flawless (boring).
And now, for the writers out there, here are some ways to solve this problem:
- Go back to making the genius hero's flaw being not physically-strong:
-- The problem with this is that their foil character (read as: their partner) is usually the physically-strong one. So having the genius become physically-strong can wreck their relationship dynamic. They are meant to complete each other.
- Make the genius' flaw being a coward:
-- Wheatley's portrayal in "Blue Sky" (Portal 2) is a brilliant example of this. He's not the brightest bulb, but he can hack terminals very well and knows the workings of the lab facility better than Portal 2's protagonist, Chell. He's so cowardly, he tries to leave Chell to die near the beginning of the plot. But by the end, he becomes willing to give up everything for her.
-- Johnny Powell (The Darkness II) is also a good example. He's an expert in darkness relics (magical objects you collect throughout the game so that he can identify them), but he's very meek (one of the early missions requires you to rescue him). However, near the end of the game, he actually gets to save you instead.
- Make the genius book-smart, but not street-smart:
-- Maybe they've studied in an academy in a safe, secluded part of the story's world, away from the main conflict of the plot. Maybe they're young and inexperienced, but have self-taught themselves some very useful knowledge. Either way, the genius is lacking in experience, so even though they're smart, they're not quiet cut-out for the dangerous situations they'll need to face.
- They're smart and nice, but evil-aligned:
-- You know how I've said that grumpy doesn't equal being a jerk? Well, being nice and polite doesn't equal being good.
-- Raven from my favourite noir film, This Gun For Hire is an example of this. He's a rare example of a noir protagonist who doesn't start out as a detective. He's a gun-for-hire assassin. He's introduced by shooting a man to steal documents for someone (who turns out to be a baddie). However, we also see Raven stop to help a little girl retrieve her toy ball before he leaves (which is very nice of him, considering that the police are coming and he has to get out of the building fast). He eventually not only brings justice by solving the mystery, but he also decided to switch to the good side.
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Right. So this is a response to @norbezdraws video, "Should We Fix Our Mad Geniuses?"
Norbez, you asked me for my thoughts on Twitter, so I'm gonna go post a novel of an explanation here, so get comfy in a nice reading chair. :)
If there's anyone else reading this, go listen to the video first, it's really interesting and it poses a rather fascinating question.
Also, sorry for the long wait for my response. ^^;
Also note: Everything I write here is about and from a storytelling and media perspective. Not real life.
I’m gonna use bullet points for my thoughts.
- On a moral level, the character should want to change. This is why Rick's capture in Rick and Morty and the protagonist in A Clockwork Orange (I haven't seen this film) are considered tragic. Because even though their capture will save people from getting hurt, they don't want to be captured or changed.
- I feel like drugs and other forms of addiction should be separated from mental illness, and that abuse should also be separated in the character examples list of flaws, because audience members' views on those different subjects could be contradictory.
For example:
Drugs/addiction is self-harming (a character flaw), so viewers may likely say, "Yes, the character should be fixed and have this removed."
Abuse (emotional/physical--and quite honestly, I think these two type should also be sub-separated; they're so different) harms other people who are around that character. This can make characters who have this type of flaw more villainous (Gothel from Disney's Tangled has been cited as an emotional abuser to her daughter) because if they don't want to change, then we as the audience see that as bad and/or irredeemable because they’re hurting people they care about and/or are close to.
Mental illness affects the character's mind. The mind is linked with personality. Therefore, if you "fix" the character by removing their mental illness, do you make the character no longer "them"? Who do they become?
Additionally, many works (such as Hellblade--which I haven’t played) frame the main character’s mental illness as not something to be cured. Rather, the story frames it as a part of the character. The challenges in the story come more from the outside world not understanding the main character’s different perception of the world.
Particularly with mental illness, opinions will vary depending on the viewer (as well as the individual character), as to whether the character should be "fixed."
Also, some examples, like Sherlock, make the addiction a flaw rather than a trait that is required for them to still be themselves/a genius. Sherlock would still be a genius without drugs. The drugs are his flaw[1], not his strength (intelligence). Take away Sherlock’s addiction and he’s still Sherlock. He’s still a detective.
*Footnote: In the BBC series and in original novels' canon, Sherlock supposedly only uses drugs when he has no case to solve. So drugs actually equals "Sherlock is not acting like a genius." BBC Sherlock actually wrecked this idea with the plot holes in season 4, but I'm going off tangent at this point (and at this point, a lot of BBC Sherlock fans--myself included--are currently not considering season 4 to even be series canon, given the amount of plot holes, out-of-character moments, and retcon-ing it contained. Seriously, what was up with that last episode?! THAT GUN DIDN’T LOOK ANYTHING LIKE A TRANQUILLISER! ARE YOU KIDDING M--).
- When I read the title of the video, I at first thought you meant "eccentricity": Characters who act outside social norms and don't follow the status quo/expectations (in an unharmful manner). Quirky characters. Characters who walk to the beat of a different drum. I understand that's not what you meant, but I might as well say my opinion on eccentric characters: It takes all sorts to make a world. They do not need to be "fixed."
- I also think misanthropic characters don't need to be fixed. I have to be clear on this, because SO many writers get misanthropia wrong: It's disliking humanity. Not wanting harm towards humanity. They just don’t want to want to deal with humanity. It's like being a hardcore grump/hermit rather than a jerk/murderer/rude person. A misanthropic person can have strong bonds with other humans, they just don't like dealing with strangers (often because they have been "burnt" before in past experiences) and can be very caring, selfless individuals with healthy relationships. Misanthropes are often the way they are because they care a lot, rather than a little (the latter being the stereotype I see a lot in fiction). Often, you can’t even tell if someone’s a misanthrope just by looking for them. A misanthrope looks at a smoker and thinks, "Why do THEY get dibs on the clean air?", etc. There is a difference between a grump and a jerk.
- I think series like Rick and Morty and BBC Sherlock have mad geniuses that treat their partner badly/questionably, yet we still like them as characters is less because of their “gifts,” and more because we see that when push comes to shove, Rick/Sherlock will act selflessly to protect Morty/John.
That’s how I interpret it anyway.
Rick is showing signs of being more caring (and hopefully less abusive) towards Morty. As Mycroft predicted, Sherlock is showing his heart more by being with John.
Their characters arcs are actually “fixing” them.
Another example of this type of relationship (or a similar type of relationship) is Eddy and her daughter Saffy’s relationship in Absolutely Fabulous. There’s an episode where Eddy protects her daughter from a guy who keeps bothering her (Saffy). Even though Eddy and Saffy constantly insult each other, at the end of the day, Eddy cares about her daughter. We don’t necessarily see their relationship as good, but we understand why they stay together.
And Eddy doesn’t even have “mad genius” nor traditionally heroic qualities. She’s the epitome of a “UK Comedy Series’ Unsympathetic Protagonist.”
Okay, now some character examples:
I'll start off with examples of abuse/addiction that are either BAD, start off as bad/questionable, or in a grey area:
These examples don't inherently make the works bad. I like all of the works listed below. These are just examples of problematic portrayals that we should pause for thought and reflect on.
- Bullet in the Face (a Canadian-American series about a criminal mastermind helping cops track down a bigger criminal mastermind) has Gunter attacking other characters to help solve cases. Gunter is portrayed as a villain protagonist, and most if not all of the characters he attacks are villains as well, making the protagonist ironically less problematic than if the writers portrayed him as a heroic character. The series basically says, “He’s a villain. So he does villainous things.”
- Dirk Gently: (We're talking BBC-2010-TV-series!Dirk, not the original books/other adaptations, nor the 2016 series.) Dirk is a detective who can solve mysteries others can't because of his odd philosophies. He has a partner, named Richard, who he hypnotises into giving him money, uses as a guinea pig (he injects him with a computer chip without warning him), and steals money from him. Yet Richard still stays with him (which is considered to be one of the biggest plot holes the adaptation has).
- Rick and Morty: Rick still continues to be abusive towards Morty, his own grandson. Rick's selfless act at the end of season 2 hints that Rick may slowly be trying to change his ways. Unity's note to Rick when it dumps him also implies that the writers are self-aware that Rick's abusive traits are a flaw, not a "kooky trait," so Rick could be interpreted as a "good" example too, because the series shows the negative effects of his behaviour.
- BBC Sherlock: As I said above.
Okay, now some examples (you asked for) of GOOD examples of abuse/addiction being portrayed in a non-romantic/kooky/positive/problematic light:
- Captain Haddock: In The Adventures of Tintin: The Crab with the Golden Claws album, Tintin meets an alcoholic who is the captain of a ship. Together, they escape the ship's crew and solve a mystery together. Haddock wouldn't really be considered an archetypal "mad genius," but by being with Tintin, his alcoholism decreases (though never actually disappears completely--writer Hergé liked to portray things realistically). His alcoholism decreases because of Tintin's support and friendship, which is really heartwarming to me.
- Dirk Gently: Here, we're talking book!Dirk. Irony, eh? In the original novels, Dirk is still abusive to his crime-solving partners (he, again, hypnotises Richard into jumping into the River Thames--which is not a nice place to go swimming, unless you like plastic bags and abandoned shopping trolleys). What makes the books different than the BBC series however, are the endings: Every partner Dirk gets, in each book, dumps him by the end of each adventure/novel they have with him because of his abusive tendencies. They don't want to be with him. That paints Dirk’s abuse as a more negative thing, instead of a “quirky” thing.
- Croak: The main character or this novel, Lex, is introduced as a teenage girl who recently developed anger management issues. She lashes out at people, especially at her school. It’s portrayed in an untraditionally human way: She describes it as feelings she knows are harmful, and she doesn’t enjoy these feelings of charged anger. She struggles to stop herself from lashing out. She also takes great care in making sure she doesn’t hurt her sister. (I haven’t finished the first book yet, so I don’t know how her character arc ends.)
- The Jennifer Ann Group’s yearly game jam focuses on creating games that educate people on teen dating abuse. The game Grace’s Diary is a notable example.
I hope this answered your questions on what my thoughts were on this subject.
@NaomiNorbez asked: Do you think people want an adult cartoon that's just about adult subjects? Like, a cartoon that doesn't glorify sex or violence, or swear a lot. A cartoon that uses its premise to talk about mature questions.
Does/Should an adult cartoon ask adult questions while also swearing and drenching itself in blood? Or can it go without, & still succeed?
I mean, in the adult cartoons I've seen, all of them asked tough questions, but sex, violence, and swearing seemed to be a requirement too.
Can an adult cartoon *just* ask hard questions? & use those other elements only when the story needs it? Would the audience accept that?
Since you asked me to, I'll give my thoughts on this subject. :)
To be honest, I’ve been meaning to write about adult animation for some time. After all, 2016 has ended up producing a record number of animated projects aimed at teenagers and adults.
I’ll approach this in chunks. There’s also a TL;DR summary right at the bottom:
Do you think people want an adult cartoon that's just about adult subjects?
There’s this great moment in the Nostalgia Critic's review of The Lorax, where an analyst-type character argues that putting deep messages in children’s animation runs the risk of “confusing” the children watching it; making deep writing a financially-risky decision. Doug Walker’s character replies, “But maybe they SHOULD be confused!”
And that’s my view of it in a way too. Sometimes audiences don't know what they want. I certainly don't, sometimes.
I love animation, so I generally give anything a chance if it's animated. I've seen animated works from different countries, from obscure to popular, and from recent to old. Because of that, I've ended up coming across a lot of gems that I was happily surprised by.
I have a foot in both worlds: I am an audience member as well as a creator. It’s a nice perspective to have, and I’ve found it to be useful. As a creator, sometimes you have to stop worrying about what other people want and instead create something you’d enjoy as an audience member. Otherwise you can run the risk or pandering, or trying to please everyone (and ending up pleasing no one).
On the other end of the spectrum, it’s also useful to remember that you’re not just writing for yourself, you’re writing for others. I remember having to watch a bunch of “art/indie short films” for a Film class and realising that sometimes, creators go too far and end up creating something that refuses to explain itself so much, that no one except the creator themself can gather the film’s meaning (everyone else has to “come up with their own”, but that can only go so far if said film has no plot or characterisation). It can isolate your audience. You need to convey what you mean in a way that others can take in, as well as not talking down to them or treating your viewers as idiots.
If you’re creating something that will be released publicly, you’ll need to keep both these aspects in mind.
Do you think people want an adult cartoon that's just about adult subjects? Like, a cartoon that doesn't glorify sex or violence, or swear a lot. A cartoon that uses its premise to talk about mature questions.
All that being said, I personally would like to see more* adult animation that doesn’t require swearing, blood, and/or sex; and I hope that soon such adult series/films will appear. I’ve been following trends in animation, and it looks like producers of animation are (at the very least) exploring that avenue to see how audiences react.
* Anomalisa is a 2015 adult stop-motion animated film that focuses on a character who feels extremely isolated, despite being successful and respected. Although has a sex scene and a few swear words, the film not only focuses more of the question it wants to asks, but it’s one of the few animated films I’ve seen that has no fantasy element. Since animation is so expensive and time-consuming, creators generally need a “reason why their story needs to be animated”, instead of in live-action. That part of Anomalisa fascinated me because it proved something that I’ve been wanting to prove for a long time: That you can animate real life as real life (Animat talks about this aspect of Anomalisa in a much more eloquent way than I can).
Anomalisa was well-received at the box office (and by critics), which is an incredible achievement for an adult stop-motion animated film.
I mean, in the adult cartoons I've seen, all of them asked tough questions, but sex, violence, and swearing seemed to be a requirement too.
I would go even further than that and say that adult animated series tend to have a certain art style they have to follow. However...
I think at the moment, we’re at that stage where creators are trying to create animated series (both adult series and kid’s series) that explore deep and complex themes. However, since “audiences don’t know what they want,” these themes have to be somewhat hidden behind a wacky/adventurey-type tone.
There’s two videos by Doug Walker that I recommend watching:
Is Weird the New Brilliant?: A video on this growing trend of animated films/series hiding deeper themes within themselves.
Are Kids Shows Better NOW Than Ever?: How kids shows are now able to explore deeper themes and have better quality due to advances in technology, previous shows that experimented and stretched boundaries, and the discovery that good writing can be profitable.
So, you’d think the next logical step is to create an adult work that outright asks it’s deep questions, without resorting to swearing/sex/violence (and other stuff that’s arguably easier to market), right?
Well, it’s kinda tricky...
Would the audience accept that?
Kubo’s Box Office Performance Hides Bigger Troubles: This article basically talks about how the 2016 stop-motion animated film Kubo and the Two Strings faced a very bizarre result: Very few people actually went to go see it, but everyone who did universally loved it. In the article, Charles Kenny argues that (given that Kubo was well-marketed) the reason why audiences failed to show up was because it was too different. That audiences say they want “something different”, but "the reality is that they almost never want something truly new and truly unique”.
See also: As Art, Why Doesn’t Animation Challenge Our Beliefs? - This article discuses how the majority of animation is still, despite its advances, somewhat stuck in a "comfort zone," unable to discuss deeper/taboo issues, like religion and beliefs, that other mediums explore.
Currently, mainstream adult animation is linked with sexual jokes, crude/gross-out humour, swearing, violence/gore, and shock humour. But adult animation can still be aimed at adults without any of those above things listed.
Change happens slowly, but change happens. There may be an adult animation that arrives that has no swearing/sex/violence, and turns out to be successful (leading to a sudden trend in series trying to do the same thing), and until then, creators will slowly experiment, letting viewers get used to unique and different ideas in increments.
Can an adult animated series just ask hard questions?
Well, series also need to have other basic things than just themes and Aesops; it needs a plot, and likeable characters. Though, there are more and more series that are pushing those rules: Phil in terms of plot (or lack thereof), and series that have evil or unsympathetic protagonists that you either end up routing for or end up being fascinated by. As the “Is Weird the New Brilliant?” video noted, some series that try to be deep don't “work” because the audience doesn't care about the characters. So, please keep that in mind.
--
In summary:
Do you think people want an adult cartoon that's just about adult subjects? Like, a cartoon that doesn't glorify sex or violence, or swear a lot. A cartoon that uses its premise to talk about mature questions.
Yes. Though some may not “know” they want it.
Does/Should an adult cartoon ask adult questions while also swearing and drenching itself in blood? Or can it go without, & still succeed? I mean, in the adult cartoons I've seen, all of them asked tough questions, but sex, violence, and swearing seemed to be a requirement too.
It shouldn’t have to. But, due to current trends, removing those things may increase its risk of financially failing.
Can an adult cartoon *just* ask hard questions? & use those other elements only when the story needs it? Would the audience accept that?
It needs to have something other than themes to draw in (and keep!) the audience, such as interesting characters.
(Stephen Megan’s) Dirk Gently: I think you'll find all good detectives drive classic cars.
Richard MacDuff: I'm not sure an Austin Leyland Princess quite counts as a classic, but, um...
In the original books, Dirk drives a Jaguar that was “built at that very special time in the company's history when they were making cars which had to stop for repairs more often than they needed to stop for petrol”. Douglas Adams was most likely referencing the 1980s-era Jaguar. Dirk often complains about the car giving him trouble, as well as him having trouble affording to keep it filled with petrol.
In the 2010 series, Dirk drives a brown 1970s Austin Leyland Princess. A car notorious for having a poor build quality, as well as being “the go-to motor to suggest your hero is broke”. A running gag throughout the series is that Dirk has trouble starting the car at the worst possible moments. According to flashbacks, he’s had the car since his university years.
In the upcoming 2016 series, Dirk appears to drive a blue 2010s Chevy Corvette. It’s an expensive sports car with a high-performance. This is most likely due to the cultural differences between the UK and US in regards to heroes’ cars (in the UK, the protagonist tends to drive an unreliable car that they refuse to replace, whereas in the US, the protagonist either has an expensive car or is striving to get an expensive car by the end of the story).
While Dirk doesn't know that he's a fictional character, he's genre-savvy enough to realise that "everything's connected". That means that, say, there's a subplot about a woman looking for her lost cat, he knows that that detail is going to be important to the main plotline later on in the story. This writing staple is refered to by writers as "Chekhov's Gun".
I can't explain why, but this meta-element in Dirk's character is such a Douglas Adams-y thing to include. :)
2 - Dirk has a Revolving Door of Companions/Partners/Sidekicks:
In every adventure, Dirk partners up with a different character (of varying genders, hierarchy, usefulness, and personality) who helps Dirk solve the mystery. So you'd think that since the companions helped Dirk so much, they're going to stick with him on more adventures, right?
However, once the mystery's solved, that companion always has a reason as to why they don't want to keep going on adventures with Dirk (ie, they don't like danger, they think Dirk's a jerk, etc.), similar to how Doctor Who has had many different companions on his adventures. Considering that Dirk Gently was written by Douglas Adams, who wrote several Doctor Who episodes, this isn't too surprising.
3 - The series is made up of detective stories with supernatural elements:
According to Ronald Knox's 10 Commandments of Detective Fiction, one of the rules is to never write a mystery where supernatural elements are involved. The Dirk Gently books take that rule and rip it apart: There's elements of time-travel, Norse Gods coming to life, aliens, and invisible cats!
I hope the new 2016 series keeps these things in mind. The 2011 series kept elements #1 and #3 in the spirit of the original books, but seemed to completely ignore #2 (though maybe they would've gone through with eventually replacing MacDuff with a new character, had the series not been cancelled).
6 YouTube Channels and 3 Podcasts I Listen to While Drawing
Here’s another “Recommendations List”-type article!
There are other YouTube channels I like, but I tend to listen to these while drawing because the videos are longer and I can follow along to what’s happening, even without ever looking at the video; I’m just listening to it.
This list is in no particular order:
6 YouTube Channels
1 - ChrisTenarium
ChrisTenarium makes Let’s Play videos (you know, videos where a person plays a video game whilst giving witty commentary). He focuses specifically on visual novel games (some good, some bad, some so bad they’re good). He also does livestreams on his Twitch channel.
Videos to start on: ChrisTenarium is currently doing an LP series for RockRobin. For a game that, um, was less than perfectly-received, see Dandelion.
2 - Movie Nights
Movie Nights is a channel where Allison (sometimes with a guest) reviews nostalgic or “so bad it’s good” films. Her reviewing style is funny-yet-informative.
Videos to start on: My favourite videos from the Movie Nights series would be her review on Sinbad: The Battle of the Dark Nights (a “so bad it’s good” film), The Adventures of Pluto Nash (a “so bad it’s boring” film), and Prehysteria! (a children’s dinosaur film I remember seeing as a kid).
3 - Midnight Screenings
Midnight Screenings is a video series where the channel’s members (including Allison from Movie Nights) talk about a film they’ve just seen in theatres (the videos tend to be filmed from inside their car). Some films they’ve enjoyed, while others are hilariously riffed-on by their review of it.
Videos to start on: Their review for the animated films Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return, Epic, and The Oogieloves (a film that went on to break box office bomb records).
4 - Retsupurae
Retsupurae is a Let’s Play group who tend to focus on “so bad it’s good”-type games, or older (pre-2000) games.
Videos to start on: My three favourite longplays they’ve done would be for the games Phantasmagoria (the beginning of Part 2 had me in tears of laughter due to the the game’s hammy acting and Retsupurae’s commentary on it), Urban Runner (Retsupurae’s interpretation that the player character is an “unreliable narrator” is pretty great), and It Came From the Desert (I find Back to the Future references really funny, okay?!).
5 - BoringTrousers
BoringTrousers is a riffing group who have various types of videos: Reviews, Let’s Plays, fanime commentaries, podcasts, and some random things.
Videos to start on: Among my favourite videos from them are their LP of Wright Brothers Mysteries (a game that is confusingly animated using sprites from The Movies) and episode 3 of their podcast.
6 - Jim Sterling
Jim Sterling makes various video game-related videos, including Let’s Play reviews, insightful editorials (titled “The Jimquisition,” wherein he puts on an amusingly-overconfident persona), and commentaries on Steam Greenlight trailers (both good and bad ones).
Videos to start on: A good place to start is his commentary on Skate Man Intense Rescue (a game that must be seen to be believed), followed by his editorial on the game’s developer’s unprofessional reaction to the video.
3 Podcasts
1 - The Buzz A Visual Novel Podcast
The Buzz is a podcast where each episode focuses on a different aspect of visual novels (characters, development, and so on). The podcast is insightful and the members clearly care about visual novel development.
2 - Animation Addicts
Located on The Rotoscopers’ website, Animation Addicts is an animation-related podcast that focuses on a different animated film for each episode. They’ve also had interviews with animation legends, including Don Bluth, Gary Goldman, and Bibo Bergeron!
3 - Blue Sky: The Podfic
This one’s for fans of Portal 2. Blue Sky: The Podfic is a radio play adaptation of the titular fanfiction by Waffles (a story that takes place after the events of Portal 2 and focuses on Wheatley and Chell’s relationship). Currently, chapter 1 is released, with chapter 2 in production. The characterisation is spot-on (especially with Wheatley’s ramble-y speech pattern) and the narration style is reminiscent to Douglas Adams’.
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So there’s the list. Hopefully, you’ll discover a new channel or podcast you like! :)
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Squidgy is a little blob of orangey-yellow clay come to life. He's Justin's best friend and lives in a little tub (similar to the kind you use for storing Playdough) that's placed on a shelf above Justin's bed (which I think is really sweet; every morning when Justin wakes up, the first thing he sees is Squidgy's tub).
Since Squidgy is an imaginary friend, he hides whenever Justin's parents enter a scene. But in the places (through time and space!) Justin travels to, Squidgy is able to show himself to everyone. Which is nice for him, because Squidgy's pretty narcissistic; for instance, there's a scene where Justin shows Squidgy a rock that looks like him (Squidgy). With a waggle of his eyebrows, Squidgy replies with, "That's one good-looking rock!" *Smooches the rock!*
He floats, and can shapeshift into different objects (like an umbrella, a miniature rocket, and a spyglass, as seen in the opening). He can also grow feet when he needs them.
Squidgy has a very unique reference pool. On the one hand, he doesn't know things like basic physics (that wood floats or that you'd float in outer space), yet he's aware of spaghetti westerns and Star Trek references. It makes sense for the show, because Justin Time would assumedly be watched by mainly young children and their parents.
It's never explained in the show how Justin "acquired" Squidgy, but I assume he was given Squidgy as a lump of dough as a gift from someone, and then he moulded it into Squidgy.
Also, Squidgy's just adorable. His simple design, his dialogue, the sound effects he makes when he pokes something. It's all very sweet.
He even wears little hats!
The Fourth Doctor
To sum up Doctor Who to those who haven't seen it, Doctor Who is a British series about a human-looking alien (simply called "the Doctor") who travels through time and space (with a, usually human female, companion), going on adventure and helping people out. If the Doctor gets mortally wounded, he "regenerates" his body and is from then on played by a different actor (this in-story explanation of why the casting changes is one of the reasons why this series has been able to go on for over 50 years). So the "Fourth Doctor" refers to the fourth carnation of the Doctor and the fourth actor who played him. Okay, got that?
The Fourth Doctor:
Is brave (despite the different carnations of the Doctor having varying personalities, bravery is one of his core, prevailing virtues).
Acts like a child despite being hundreds of years old.
Wears a ridiculously-long scarf.
Seems to like feigning ignorance a lot, seeming to know a lot more about what is going on than he lets on (similar to Mulberry).
I didn't put him on the list due to how I found the episodes of Doctor Who to go into peaks and valleys with its writing: Overall, Doctor Who is a good show. But due to the amount of varying writers the show goes through, there are quite a lot of episodes I didn't enjoy. And I don't even blame the series for that--I moreso blame my own personal tastes (I seem to mainly/only like episodes set in modern-day Britain, with non-Dalek, non-Cybermen villains. A very specific taste indeed).
A Fourth Doctor episode I highly recommend would be The City of Death. It's written by Douglas Adams (of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Dirk Gently fame), and is an episode that highlights Tom Baker's comedic acting abilities (the scene where the Doctor's trying to play dumb towards the main villains is highly amusing).
An exchange from The City of Death:
(The Doctor is grabbed by a thug and thrown into the villain's headquarters, which is an expensive-looking property in modern-day 1970's Paris.)
The Doctor: (Smiling at the villain) I say, I like your butler! He's so violent!
(The Doctor then proceeds to make himself at home in the villain's lair by cheerfully pouring himself a glass of port.)
Sherlock
I was happily surprised by how well-written BBC Sherlock is (I didn't watch it until the second series aired--and even then, only after a lot of people recommended it to me--because its premise of "Sherlock Holmes in modern day" sounded gimmicky to me. Boy, how wrong I was).
By "Sherlock," I specifically Benedict Cumberbatch's version of Sherlock, who (along with the writers' help) creates a Sherlock I like more than he Jeremy Bret's Sherlock (a feat I thought was impossible).
Sock and Jonathan
Go watch their short film. A sequel is in the works.
Why These Characters?
I started thinking about why I liked these characters. Being somewhat eclectic in interests, this lists spans from many formats (novels/films/series/comics/video games) to several genres (adventure/slice-of-life/fantasy/detective mystery/1930s drama/sci-fi/sitcoms). All these characters seem very different, so what do they all have in common?
The most noticeable thing is that each character has their own brand of humour.
Aside from the antagonists, almost all the characters on this list have a foil character (who is just as interesting in their own right) that they act off of. I like that. You can see from the stories I write that I love writing duos. I virtually never write about a trio or more.
Paddington is quite child-like compared to how he's treated by the people around him; they treat him as an adult, even referring to him as "Mr. Brown." Since Paddington has logic similar to a child's, he makes a lot of mistakes that you wouldn't expect an adult to make (flooding a bathroom with water, getting marmalade jam on something expensive, etc.). However, he has the politeness of an adult, and never ever does something out of selfishness (unlike most children, who usually give in to their id), and always tries to be helpful. It also helps that he's a bear who immigrated to London from "darkest Peru," and therefore isn't used to London's customs.
Although Paddington began as a series of books, I know him best from the 90s series, The Adventures of Paddington Bear.
There's also an earlier stop-motion animated series, and I can also recommend the film adaptation (though the film has some moments that feel out-of-character, like the toilet scene highlighted in the trailer).
Guybrush Threepwood
From The Monkey Island video game series.
The evolution of Guybrush Threepwood.
Guybrush is a funny video game protagonist. He greets everyone he meets with a cheerful, "I'm Guybrush Threepwood. A mighty pirate!" and has a sharp wit that include a quite meta/fourth-wall sense of humour.
Although Guybrush is a lot less strong and "mighty" than he believes himself to be, he is shown to be resourceful (which is good for us, since he's an adventure game protagonist), a good puzzle-solver, highly literate (despite dropping out of school, he's able to pronounce extremely complex words without having to think about it or sound them out), and is immensely loyal to his girlfriend.
He's voiced by Dominic Armato, who does fantastic reads on Guybrush's lines. It's great when you're given dialogue options and you're tempted to choose one just to hear Guybrush say it.
My favourite depiction of Guybrush would be the third game in the series, The Curse of Monkey Island. Though I should point out that I played the series out of order (I played the third game first) and I haven't yet played the fourth and fifth instalments.
Malcolm Tucker
The amazingly well-done use of swearing in the British political dramedy, The Thick of It, is worth its own article (and this is coming from a person who believes swearing in television is either cheaply overused, misused, or simply not used in a way that helps the plot or give character development). No other character in this series uses swearing at the same level as Malcolm Tucker. And it helps tell us about his character:
He understands the power of words (a major theme of this political series) and knows how to manipulate it (see: His more creative profanity).
He knows that he won't get fired for this behaviour because he's too useful (and because he "knows too much").
He has a hot-blooded temper.
His job in the British government is being a "spin doctor": A spokesperson employed to give a favourable interpretation of events to the media, especially on behalf of a political party he's linked with.
I looked forward to Malcolm's scenes for each episode because he's great in every scene he's in. He one of those characters who's very "quotable." He's played by Peter Capaldi (who would later go on to play Doctor Who), and he uses a lot of visual humour with Malcolm as well as verbal humour:
The interesting thing about Malcolm is, it's hard to place into a category. Is he a villain? The protagonist? An anti-hero? He does a lot of horrible things to people in the series, but he still strangely remains likeable to the audience. I think there's three main reasons why this is so:
His confidence.
He ultimately fights not for himself, but for the party he believes in.
He's nice and acts professionally towards one person: Sam. His PA and the only character Malcolm believes has a head on their shoulders.
We also get to see Malcolm at his weakest in later episodes, and how he has to get himself out of those dangers he comes across.
Sergeant Nicolas Angel
From Hot Fuzz.
Nicolas Angel is a character who manages to pull off a lot of challenging character traits, without falling into their common writing pitfalls: Nicolas is stiff, but not annoying; serious, but not dull. In fact, he's got a lot of funny lines in the film.
At the beginning of his character arc, he believes in the power of the law above all things, but as time progresses, he learns how to calm down, "switch off," and break rules, with the help of his foil, PC Danny Butterman.
"You know, Jackie, you bring me the nicest things. Your methods could be a little bit less mass-murdery, but... who am I to argue?"
A non-player character from The Darkness II.
Johnny Powell is a strange mix of both the exotic/fantastical, and the mundane/ordinary. He's an academic graduate who studied scripture knowledge and the occult, but then discovered that the Darkness (the powerful entity that lives inside our player character), as well as any Darkness relic, has a sort-of drug-like addiction effect on him. Fearing that the Darkness' power would turn him evil, he ran away.
The game starts with us reuniting with him because we need his help.
It's interesting for me to think that when I saw the opening cutscene with him narrating, I thought he was crazy. He acts so paranoid and twitchy in the opening. But as I played, I slowly realised that in a world of Mafia friends and Brotherhood foes, Johnny Powell's actually the most sane and intelligent character in the game.
Note the occult-type symbols drawn in chalk all over his jacket.
In the main storyline, he helps our main character find information so that we can progress in the game with a new objective. He'll stay in our vast library while we go into the thick of battle.
In the side/multiplayer campaign, V for Vendettas, we actually start the storyline by rescuing him from a warehouse (where the villains have kidnapped him). It's pretty satisfying because after that, Johnny repays us by giving us objectives and information through in-game walkie-talkie conversations.
On top of all that, every time get find a Relic (the collectables in this game), he rewards us with an amusing description of the object we've found. This is one of the few times I've honestly tried to collect a whole set of something in a video game. There's no bonus to the collectables other than extra dialogue from Johnny, and that's enough of a motivation.
He also becomes our/Jackie's personal medic after we get shot in the face at point-blank range. That's nice of him. :)
However...
However, however, however...
The reason why Johnny Powell is so low on this list is because I feel like the writers don't know how good a character he is. He's mistreated by the player character (Jackie) as well as his Mafia co-workers.
In the Vendettas campaign, I tend to play as Shoshana (I've replayed this game a lot) not because she necessarily has the best weapon out of the four choices, but because she's one of the only characters who's actually nice to Johnny (she addresses him as "sir," leading Johnny to say that he feels like "royalty").
I would have liked to have seen Johnny go through a deeper character arc, where he slowly becomes more and more self-confident (he does a little, but not by a lot). Like a miner who refuses to dig another level into their goldmine, the writers don't seem to use Johnny Powell to his fullest potential.
Maybe I'm just being greedy; he is given a lot of screen time to be honest (in both the main campaign and the vendettas campaign). Maybe the writers wanted to "save" him for future scenes in the third (now-cancelled) game. We'll never know.
10) Lorne Malvo
From the 2014 series Fargo.
In a town filled with many baddies, Lorne stands out as a great villain. He's intelligent, has a surprising underdog tone about him, and possibly has a supernatural quality to him.
He has his own personal rules that he follows and will follow them even if it means going against his employers. This is his mantra: He hates bullies and he hates idiots. If he comes across a character whom he realises is either of those, he will either troll them at best, or kill them at worst.
For example, there's this scene where he "tests" a character (we'll call him "Don") by telling him a fairy tale about a boy raised by wolves in the snow (and whom became envious of humans living in warm houses because of it), hoping that Don will understand that the boy is him (Don); that he's growing too greedy. When Don guesses wrong, we see Lorne roll his eyes and mentally check-out of the rest of the conversation.
And then, in Fargo's well-known comedically-dark fashion, Lorne creatively kills him.
In another scene, the opposite happens: Lorne ends up in the waiting room of a hospital and has a conversation with Lester (arguably the series' main character). Lorne learns that Lester wound up in hospital because he was getting bullied by another character. Lorne then proceeds to kill said bully to help a fellow underdog out (although Lorne has other reasons to kill this guy, he also goes out of his way to continually help Lester later on).
This is a trait that makes him different from the other notable killers in the series, such as Mr. Numbers and Mr. Wrench (whom we see killing perfectly nice characters to avoid witnesses).
Pictured: Lorne trollin' again.
This is from another post I wrote about Lorne:
This was the exact moment I knew I’d like Lorne’s character. He may be a villain, but he’s got a dark sense of humour.
People think Lorne helps Lester in episode 1 just because they both hate Sam Hess and they both benefit from his death. It isn’t. I think Lorne kinda sees a bit of himself in Lester, in a weird way: He sees a person who’s been put-upon, bullied, and overlooked by others. We see Lorne get similar treatment from other characters who don’t know what he is (and they later come to really regret it).
We also see in Lorne’s introduction (where he basically just trolls a bunch of townsfolk XD ) that he hates two kinds of people: Bullies and idiots. When he meets Lester, he sees that he’s neither, so he gives him some advice (albeit in a manipulative way) that ends up making Lester stronger. (Source)
I didn't put him high on the list because there's a scene in Episode 7 (I'll be vague here) where he breaks his own rules by going into a situation, guns blazing, and starts shooting several innocent bystanders. I'm not sure if this was a writing fumble or if the writers were trying to show the audience that Lorne was growing more evil... but since it's not clear, he loses points for that.
If you haven't seen the Fargo series (which is a great series, by the way), Lorne's in the first season only, since each season is set in a different timeline (unpopular opinion: I'm not a fan of season 2).
Honorable mentions:
There are some other characters I'd like to give a quick mention to (in no particular order)...
MacGyver
He's got 80s mullet (aka animation hair), he's got dry wit, he's got an awesome theme song, he's polite, and he doesn't like guns.
MacGyver is an American 80s series about a special agent (Angus MacGyver) who travelled the world to stop crime, capture baddies, and rescue people. But that isn't what made MacGyver such a unique show. Oh, nope. What's interesting about it is how the main character gets out of sticky situations...
... Using everyday objects.
Have the baddies handcuffed you with plastic? Melt it off using a heater! Got a chemical spill? Use a chocolate bar! There's even a pre-opening episode where MacGyver gets out of every situation he's in using a paper map.
MacGyver possesses an almost encyclopedic-level of knowledge on physical science. He's an action hero with intelligence (MacGyver was written by Lee David Zlotoff, who was good at writing characters who were intelligent, yet didn't have the stereotypically "uncool geek" qualities which were prevalent in such characters written in that era).
Similar to Tintin, I also like than MacGyver is also not a womaniser, a rarity among series action heroes. The reason why I think the womaiser trope is getting tiresome is less to do with audience pandering and more to do with how flawed it makes the series' writing: If the main character travels to different parts of the world in each episode, the we know the main character is not going to get into a long-term relationship at this point. So why bother adding a love interest when the "will-they-or-won't-they" aspect of it is a foregone conclusion? Any drama or suspense surrounding it is now removed.
Anyway, Angus MacGyver almost always has a different female companion per episode (varying from helpful to hindering). Sometimes the woman is attracted to MacGyver, but he always gently tells them that he isn't interested.
He's played by Richard Dean Anderson. There's plans for a reboot of MacGyver, but I wonder who will play the titular role. I can't imagine anyone but Richard Dean Anderson playing him. It was just one of those perfect casting decisions.
For the original series, I'd recommend seeing episodes from the first three seasons. Later seasons had to deal with some network-enforced rules of the time (along the lines of "you can't show on-screen how to build a weapon or perform a theft on television") which caused MacGyver's later seasons to rely less on his ability to build and fix things.
I also recommend reading What Would MacGyver Do? It's a humorous collection of non-fictional short stories that doesn't include MacGyver himself, but rather centres around MacGyver's philosophy of using a confidence and scientific know-how to get out of a bad situation. Each section of the book also has an article discussing an aspect of MacGyver's character and the original series.
Alistair Deacon
As Time Goes By (yet another series written by Bob Larbey) is a rom com series about a couple (named Jean and Lionel) who meet, fall in love, but have to separate (due to Lionel leaving to go fight in the Korean war). After losing touch with each other for thirty years, they finally meet each other again through a chance encounter.
Alistair starts out in this series as an antagonist. He's introduced as a rival to protagonist Lionel, who are both romantically-interested in Jean.
What's interesting though is that Alistair's character (as well as my interpretation of him) changes so much from season to season.
At first, he's portrayed as a "whiz kid" yuppie who's into the latest technology (Lionel on the other hand is "still very happy with [his] inkpot and quill"), and using buzzwords like "pizzazz" and "gotta fly!" Alistair makes a great foil to Lionel, with the two having to hang around each other because Lionel's writing a book and Alistair is his publisher.
Pictured: Alistair getting into Lionel's personal space.
Alistair is not a man who goes by halves. His publishing company is so successful that he doesn't seem to even consider costs. There's a pretty hilarious episode where he's trying various and increasingly elaborate ways to ask Jean on a date, including hiring a band to sing to her, filling her office with heart-shaped balloons, and hiring a gorilla gram to greet her (much to her annoyance and confusion).
Look at him in his smug Boss chair.
And although his whiz kid qualities never quite go away, over time Alistair ends up giving up trying to woo Jean, and ends up being a very loyal friend to both of them, even after Lionel gets his book published. He goes from being a "greaseball" (a term I use for "that one male rival character that seems to appear in every rom com I've ever come across") and morphs into a genuinely likeable character. He even ends up getting several episodes that focus on him and show his more vulnerable side.
I think the following scene from one of the episodes sums up Alistair's personality:
(After Jean tells him he's being overconfident)
Alistair: "I remember when I was, oh... six months old. I remember looking at my little plastic mirror with the red and yellow beads and thinking, 'Face it. Alistair Deacon... You have got a lot to be confident about!'”
(Puts his thumb in his mouth like a baby, to make Jean laugh.)
He's played by Philip Bretherton, who brings a lot of physical comedy into the series with his facial expressions (for instance, after failing spectacularly to woo a woman, he just shrugs nonchalantly and goes back to reading his book in an, "Oh, well. Was worth a shot," kind of way).
Pictured: The five main characters in the classic "sitcom pose".
He's a talking skeleton detective who knows fire magic. If that doesn't sell you, I don't know what will!
Alright, alright, alright...
Skulduggery Pleasant is a series of novels by Derek Landy. It tells the story of an Irish detective who goes around Dublin (in a stylist Bentley!) solving crimes and "kicking evil very hard in the face."
And yes, Mr. Pleasant is indeed a talking Skeleton with magical powers.
Skulduggery's partner is a snarky twelve-year-old girl named Stephanie. The Skeleton Detective's previous partner was a boy who had gotten himself killed off during an adventure, so Skulduggery's a lot more cautious about taking Stephanie with him to solve cases.
Despite being a skeleton (or maybe, because of that), Skulduggery is actually quite silly. His sense of humour is pretty quotable:
Skulduggery: There’s something about you, Valkyrie. I’m not quite sure what it is. I look at you and…
Valkyrie: And you’re reminded of yourself when you were my age?
Skulduggery: Hmm? Oh, no, what I was going to say is there’s something about you that is really annoying, and you never do what you’re told, and sometimes I question your intelligence, but even so I’m going to train you, because I like having someone follow me around like a little puppy. It makes me feel good about myself.
If reading the novels yourself seems like a daunting task, there's also a really excellent audio book for the first book.
6) Megabyte
Megabyte is everything I like in a villain. He has wit, intelligence, class, and when push comes to shove, he's just as physically deadly as he is intellectually dangerous.
He's also voiced by Tony Jay, whom you probably know as the voice of Frollo from The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Shere Khan from The Jungle Book. Tony Jay has such a recognisable, unique voice and is able to perform well in both threatening scenes as well as comedic ones.
In ReBoot, the story takes place inside an individual computer. Under that logic, Megabyte is a virus who wants to find a way to enter the Net. The main force that's stopping him from doing so is the series' protagonist Bob, known as a "Guardian" (he's basically an antivirus protection program personified).
Megabyte is one of the main reasons why ReBoot is still an amazing show, even after so many years! It was the first half-hour fully CG animated series ever created, and it's worth checking out if you aren't familiar with it. There's also a reboot of ReBoot in the works, where apparently "Megabyte will have a particularly prominent role." Needless to say, I'm super excited. 8)
7) Wheatley
From Portal 2.
Wheatley is a funny little robot AI. He has no arms, no legs, and no wheels. He's just a metallic, talking sphere with handles. After he falls off his Management Rail, you (playing as a human named Chell) have to carry him for him to even move. This dependence is sorta poetically symbiotic, because he ends up helping you by hacking exits, giving directions, and generally explaining things.
Wheatley is voiced by Stephen Merchant (whom I'd previously known about through The Ricky Gervais Show). In an interview, Merchant describes Wheatley as "tragically loveable and lovably tragic," which I think is a good description. Wheatley is dependant on Chell. He tries to confidently act like he knows everything and is in control of the situation, when in reality, he's winging just as much as your character is. He's a rare example of a dirty coward that strangely remains likeable.
He's also funny. Very, very funny.
Wheatley's character is one of the reasons why Portal 2 is such a memorable game. There's lots of "Best of Wheatley" compilation videos on YouTube if you don't play video games.
I'd also recommend reading the fan-written sequel, Blue Sky by Waffles. There's a podfic adaptation in production (with chapter 1 released) you can listen to of it (with Harry Callaghan voicing Wheatley). It's written so in-character and the humorous narration really keeps with the spirit of the Portal series.
There's also some great fan-made animated short films by Harry Callaghan.
8) Marty McFly
I won't go into great detail here, because I'm pretty sure everyone who hasn't lived under a rock knows about the Back to the Future film trilogy, and by extension, Marty.
His foil is Doc Brown. The scientist who built the time-travelling DeLorean. Doc is generally disliked by virtually every character in the films, except for Marty, who trusts him and treats him as a friend.
He's also played by Michael J. Fox. A Canadian actor who has this unparalleled charisma about him. I could chuck a brick within the most densely-populated cities for an hour without hitting a single person who doesn't like Michael J. Fox.
Marty's got all the core traits I like in a character. He's got wit, he's got determination (think about it: Each film is caused by Marty trying to save Doc's life), and he can think on his feet (the scene where Biff tries to run Marty over in the second film comes to mind).
I've started watching an LP of the Back to the Future video game by Telltale where Marty is again voiced by Michael J. Fox. While this is one of Telltale's early pre-Walking Dead titles (and therefore, has character modelling that looks a bit outdated), I still recommend checking it out if you're a Back to the Future fan. The game is five episodes long and contains original storylines that I found myself surprisingly invested in.
It's also worth noting that another series I'm currently enjoying originally started out as a parody of Doc and Marty.
I'm gonna write this like a recommendations list: If you're unfamiliar with any of these characters, then I highly recommend that you check out the works they are in. All of the characters on this top 10 list are characters so well-fleshed out that I confidently feel like I could write fanfiction about them I can detect if a writer is writing them out of character.
I also want to thank @naominorbez for tagging me to do this list. It was a fun subject to sink my teeth into. You should also go read her list. I discovered some pretty interesting works I hadn't even heard about.
I'm probably going to go re-read this list later and start wringing my hands, thinking, "Oh, why didn't I mention such-and-such?" Ah, well...
Keep in mind this is a favourite character list, not favourite works. So even though I cite Edward Gorey as a huge influence on my work, you're not going to find him anywhere on this list because I like his work for things other than the characters (like his dark humour, art style, Edwardian inspiration, surrealism, and unconventional storytelling devices). I've also tried to pick characters I've known for a long time.
And for some reason, I'm gonna start with number one (my all-time favourite) instead of starting with number ten and working my way up. I'm not sure why I'm being unconventional and sorting the list this way; it just feels right.
Here we go...
1) Bertie Wooster
I tried really, really, really hard to write a good summary of why Bertie is such a good character, but I realised that the following blog post puts it in far better words than I can:
10 Reasons why you can't NOT like Bertie Wooster
Go and read it, then come back here. ;)
I guess I'll just talk about stuff the article doesn't mention...
Jeeves & Wooster is a series of novels by PG Wodehouse. I love the books (the narration style is told through Bertie's 1930s-slang-filleded style, which is hilarious), but if you're not a reader, there's always the ITV series adaptation.
Also, if you want to go into specifics, my favourite portrayal of Bertie would be the 1990s television series adaptation, where he's played by Huge Laurie.
Each episode of Jeeves & Wooster usually revolves around Bertie accidentally getting engaged to a woman he doesn't love, and having to find a back-door way of getting out of marriage, with the help of his butler valet, Jeeves. It's like a reverse love story: Instead of the guy trying to get together with the girl, he's trying to get away from her. In the past, I've compared this formula to "reverse-harem" anime series.
But Bertie does not travel alone (you'll see this as a recurring theme on this list; just about every character listed here is part of a duo). Jeeves is Bertie's character foil. Jeeves is super-intelligent (an archetypal Chess Master), hard-working, and stoically cool-headed. Basically, he's everything Bertie isn't. They're a great duo and the TV series has Jeeves played by Stephen Fry, who has marvellous chemistry with Hugh Laurie (they worked together for years as a comedy duo in A Bit of Fry & Laurie prior to starring in Jeeves & Wooster).
You know what? I'm just gonna make things easy and list each character, as well as mentioning their foil character. (Kinda cheating, I know, but whatev.)
2) Mulberry
Mulberry is a strange fandom. Some would call it "small." Others would call it, "invisible under the naked eye." I mention this because I have two problems whenever I mention the British 1992 dramedy series Mulberry: 1) No one seems to know about it. And, 2) Mulberry is spoilery. Like, we're talking Breaking-Bad-meets-Undertale levels of spoilery. Mulberry is my favourite series too, just so you know. It was co-written by my favourite screenwriter, Bob Larbey. I'd like to gush and talk about Mulberry and write about why this series is so awesome (all the little details in the acting, the foreshadowing, the music, etc.), but I dare not give away spoilers. It's like Undertale, in that it's best if you go into it totally blind (Also, don't look up Mulberry on Wikipedia, because the Wiki article of it quite candidly gives away major, MAJOR spoilers).
I will also say that it has dark elements to it (I guess you'd list the series as a "dark comedy" if you had to categorise it), but the series' tone actually ends up feeling really light-hearted and sweet. :3
It's like trying to explain the plot line to Undertale (I know I keep mentioning this game, but it really is an apt analogy) without giving the game away (pardon the pun). Sure, Undertale is "a video game about a child who falls down a hole and is trying to get out of it," but it sounds dull, right? The description's technically true, but there's so much more to it than that.
But in order to talk about Mulberry's titular main character, I'm gonna have to talk about the other main character of the series (and some very basic, deceptively-dull-sounding plot)...
Mulberry's foil is Miss Farnaby: An elderly, grouchy woman who owns a countryside manor (through dialogue, I can determine that the manor's located either near or on the outskirts of Dorset). After firing yet another domestic worker, she hires Mulberry. Mulberry's co-workers immediately become suspicious of him, because firstly, he applied for the job before it was publicly advertised. And secondly, because he's a complete weirdo.
You know how writers give the advice of establishing your character's personality in the very first scene they appear in?
THIS is the first scene Mulberry is seen in (prior to this, his face is turned away from the camera).
He slid down the banister OF A MANOR HOUSE like a CHILD, right after STEPPING INTO THE PLACE UNINVITED.
Karl Howman is a great actor in this. I can't imagine Mulberry being played by anyone else. He has very good timing with his dialogue and pulls some great slapstick. Mulberry comes off as this child in a man's body, but with hints that he's a lot more adult and intelligent than he's letting on.
Also, yes, he wears a different waistcoat per episode and other characters comment on it. :3 And he always wears it over his completely-black outfit. *cough*SYMBOLISM*sough*
But there's more to Mulberry than that. He also seems to honestly care about Miss Farnaby. They have some surprisingly great chemistry together; there's this particular scene I really like in series 2, where Miss Farnably and Mulberry are trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle together. As Mulberry tries to jam puzzle pieces together (pieces that clearly don't fit), Miss Farnably asks him about his thoughts on death and the afterlife. The scene ends up being very funny, sad, and touching all at the same time.
The reason why he applied to work for her is one of the driving questions in the series (which seems to revolve around something dark and possibly supernatural). But whatever his main goal is, it seems like all he'd rather do is help Miss Farnaby live the rest of her life to the fullest, getting her to do things she regretted not doing as a child (such as flying a kite in one episode, and breaking ties from poisonous relationships in another). I know this sounds like a really simple "young guy-tries-to-make-a-grumpy-old-woman-have-fun-each-episode" plot, but you're just gonna have to trust me on this and watch the series for yourself. It'll make you laugh. And it'll possibly make you cry.
Howman also sings the series' opening theme, which I think is a sweet touch.
(Also, if you watch the series, remember that bridge in the opening. That will be important later.)
I really wish more people knew about this series.
3) Holden Caulfield
In the past, I've described Holden Caulfield as my spirit animal.
I feel like Holden is more of who I am, rather than who I want to be. He has a narration style that is strangely identifiable to me:
“Where I want to start telling is the day I left Pencey Prep. Pency Prep is this school that’s in Agerstown, Pennsylvania. You probably heard about it. You’ve probably seen the ads, anyway. They advertise in about a thousand magazines, always showing some hot-shot guy on a horse jumping over a fence. Like as if all you ever did at Pencey was play polo all the time. I never even once saw a horse anywhere near the place. And underneath the guy on the horse’s picture, it always says: “Since 1888 we have been molding boys into splendid, clear-thinking young men.” Strictly for the birds. They don’t do any damn more molding at Pencey than they do at any other school. And I didn’t know anybody there that was splendid and clear-thinking and all. Maybe two guys. If that many. And they probably came to Pencey that way.”
Holden is the main character in the novel The Catcher in The Rye by J.D. Salinger. Describing the plot is difficult because it's basically a bunch of stuff that happens after Holden runs away from school and spends a night milling around New York. The reason why the book is so memorable is not because of its plot, it's because of Holden's witty narration throughout it.
He basically has to carry the weight of this novel on his shoulders, which is a pretty impressive feat.
Now, The Catcher in The Rye is a novel that's used for school book reports a lot in America (so I've heard--as a Canadian, I didn't come across it). Because of this, most people tend to say that the major theme of the novel and the protagonist is that Holden doesn't want to lose his innocence. But I actually disagree with this idea. The scene that causes people to come to this conclusion appears very very late in the story, and I couldn't help but find a much noticeable theme:
Holden is an intelligent young man who is ignored and alienated because of his shyness.
If you compare what Holden says versus what he thinks in his narration, there's a surprising difference. Instead of wit or thought-provoking observations, Holden's dialogue is mainly made up of "Ums..." and "Yes sirs" towards his professors. His mentors, elders, and betters ironically never discover the wisdom within Holden because they are too full of themselves (or the personal problems they're currently facing) to even notice it. Holden is too introverted (or too worried about getting into trouble) to speak his mind in the same way that he thinks his thoughts.
And that is the great tragedy of Holden Caulfield.
4) Captain Haddock
This is a really close tie between Haddock and Tintin. I feel like they're necessary foils. If you have one, you need the other (even though there's a many Tintin stories without Haddock. But after his first appearance, Haddock stayed).
I've known this character for such a long time that it's hard for me to sum him up. Tintin, along with other works in my early childhood, are simply a part of my DNA at this point. It's like a fish trying to give a tutorial on swimming, but I'll try to sum him up:
Captain Haddock:
Is a character from The Adventures of Tintin (a 1930s-70s comic book/graphic novel series that was later adapted into a 90s animated series, and a Steven Spielberg film).
Drinks a lot. (He was pretty sad when we're first introduced with him. but once he meets Tintin, the young reporter ends up being a really positive influence on him, so his drinking noticeably decreases).
Swears a lot. But only uses fictional swear words like "Blistering barnacles!" and "Thundering typhoons!"
Wears an outfit that I really like the design of (from the overall colour scheme, to the peaked cap, to the little detail of an anchor symbol stitched to his blue shirt).
Ends up owning a huge manor estate and lets Tintin stay with him indefinitely (which is nice of him, since Tintin helped him get the money to buy it). Suddenly becoming rich doesn't negatively change Haddock.
Ends up becoming very loyal friend. His most noble act arguably being in the pivotal scene of Tintin in Tibet, in which he stoically tries to sacrifice his life to save Tintin. (Hergé later said that this ended up becoming his favourite of the Tintin stories--I've read several of Hergé's biographies, and I ended up appreciating this story even more when I discovered that this story helped Hergé solider through some very negative and life-changing events were happening to him during the making of the album).
The creator of The Adventures of Tintin (Hergé) said that Captain Haddock ended up becoming his favourite character of the series. I can definitely understand why: His reactions to everything and the comically annoying things that happen to him are very empathetic; like trying to shake off a piece of sticky tape that repeatedly gets stuck to him:
It's quite interesting to watch Haddock start out as (for lack of a better word) a plot convenience to fix problems Hergé came across: Tintin needed help escaping the Karaboujan, and in stories that followed directly afterwards, Tintin needed connections with a captain to travel by ship (The Shooting Star). He went through noticeable and on-purpose character development--I rarity among characters of the 1920s-40s.
I can recommend the 90′s Nelvana animated series adaptation if you can't get your hands on the original comics/albums, as well as the Spielberg film, and the BBC radio drama.
I cannot recommend the Belvision series, nor the Lake of Sharks film adaptation. At all. You stay away from that.
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[redacted] Life is a visual novel game I created for the game jam, NaNoRenO 2016.
Since I won’t be making a post-mortem for the game, I’m instead making this behind-the-scenes post about the process of making [redacted] Life.
The Writing
After making Three Guys That Paint and Must Love Jaws, I’ve developed and refined my process of writing scripts for visual novels. There’s still tons of room for improvement, but this is what it’s like so far:
Brainstorm ideas on Notepad and Twine (I’ll use one Twine card per idea/plot point/scene).
Arrange the plot points in Twine until I have a good idea of the game’s story (at this stage, I like to have a rough plot summary at this point).
Write a first draft of the whole game’s script in Microsoft Word 2013, organising the game by separating each scene (meaning each time the background changes) into a Collapsible Heading (which Word 2013 allows you to do). At this stage, I’ve got notes like “show this CG,” and “have Adrian enter from the left,” but they’re not written down as proper Ren’Py code.
After editing the draft for spelling and punctuation mistakes (and just general revising), I’ll start editing all of the character’s dialogue so that it’s written like Ren’Py code (meaning all dialogue has a character tag and in contained in quotes). Word’s Find/Replace tool is very useful here.
I’ll copy/paste the whole script into Editra and start replacing any notes with proper Ren’Py coding, as well as adding any coding I’ve left out until now (for example, I note some character expression changes in Word, but not every one).
Then I’ll start up the game to see how it looks so far, and, through trial and error, I’ll edit the coding.
Above image: All the plot points of [redacted] Life in Twine.
Above: The script in Word.
Inspiration
I generally don’t talk about or go into detail about the inspiration behind my games. It just feels futile to me because I often feel that the things that inspire or influence us the most are influences that we aren’t even aware of (I’m pretty sure that Hergé and Edward Gorey’s work has influenced every single project I’ve made, but I’d have trouble putting into words as to how they have). My eclectic nature also makes it hard for me to track down where an idea originally sprung from.
However, due to the nature of this game, I feel like I need to at least try listing some of my sources of inspiration...
I think the thing that first made me come up with the whole concept of [redacted] Life was watching Retsupurea's Let's Play video series of Phantasmagoria. At some point during their playthough, one of the LPers jokingly says “She’s (re: the game’s player character) realising she’s in the game; she’s trying to get out!”
On top of that, Phantasmagoria is also a horror game set in a mansion with a magician antagonist. Adrian’s name is also the male variant for “Adrien,” the name of Phantasmagoria’s protagonist.
Save the Date, a visual novel where you have to replay routes to progress and alter the plot, was also a big inspiration. It also proved to me that Ren’Py was an engine that was capable of doing the things I wanted my game to do. The game also taught me about the concept of “persistent data,” which I’ll talk more about later.
The first VN I ever played, Air Pressure, was probably where I got the idea of Rebecca glitching out.
Hana’s character was based on an anime idea posted on Tumblr. The premise (later referred to as Nope: The Anime) was about a girl with pink hair who goes to great lengths to avoid becoming an anime protagonist.
The Nancy Drew game series, as well as the indie game Dreaming Mary, was the inspiration for a Second Chance button after you’re told that you’ve made a fatal error, as well as a voice asking if you’re happy with your fate once you reach an ending.
Pony Island’s idea of not playing the game as intended and seeing glitches.
Undertale’s (ending spoiler alert) concept of the game deleting save files, smashing the screen, and crashing the game. Also Tirle’s direct conversation to the player is reminiscent of Flowey’s talk with the player at the end of the neutral and pacifist endings.
The ending exchange between Adrian and Hana actually took a lot of inspiration from the ending scene of 1957′s 12 Angry Men. The film ends with the main character finally exiting the claustrophobic room, and walks down the courthouse steps. He spots one of the twelve other jury members and they exchange their names.
Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, for its use of vagueness in why the place is haunted--letting the viewer come up with their own interpretations (I never fully explained how Miro and Clara died, but left some clues for the player).
The Truman Show & Total Recall, for its futuristic/sci-fi elements used by the characters for everyday entertainment, as well as their exploration on how the technology can go wrong, or lead to unhappiness.
This image:
Image source: (x)
During the time, I wrote the following about the image:
This actually reminds me of the one of the short stories from The Chronicles of Harris Burdick (the one titled Just Desert by M. T. Anderson).
It was basically about a boy who discovers that an outside entity has built a world for him, populated by false people. And the only proof he has of this is a book he finds that has the author saying something like, “This world is fake. They are watching. Just put the book down and don’t look shocked. They must not find out you know." (the book being obscure enough that it was able to get past the entity’s censorship).
This also reminds me of the British tv series, Life on Mars, which is about a police officer from the 2000’s getting hit by a car and waking up in the 1970’s. The series makes it ambiguous as to whether or not he actually time-travelled, or is in a coma and is dreaming all of it, because he keeps seeing/hearing messages from the 2000’s (the voice of his mother on a radio telling him to wake up, etc).
Some other bits of trivia/notes:
Tirle is "Title" with an r. That's literally how I picked their name.
The splashscreen's three-note song is a chip-tune version of the guitar strum I’ve used for the beginning splashscreen in my previous visual novels.
The license plate on Rebecca and Adrian’s car is 2GAT123 (though part of it is cut off from the “camera” angle). It’s a fictional license plate commonly used in films and television to avoid accidentally using a real one.
Rebecca and Adrian’s car is an orange 1970's Mercedes-Benz 450 SL.
The game was originally titled "Antique Paladin," as a reference to the recurring suit of armour.
Adrian musing that the barrels had secret passages was a reference to the Tintin adventure, The Crab with the Golden Claws.
One of the error messages mentions “Lotus,” which is a reference to Homer's Odyssey wherein the heroes eat a lotus that makes them forget about their quest (similar to how Adrian has amnesia).
The tarot card reading can also be an interpretation of Adrian’s whole journey: He (the Fool) is trapped in a haunted mansion (the Tower) and ends up freeing himself from it (Death) by teaming up with Hana (the Empress) and through sheer determination (Strength). I wonder how many players picked up on that.
Tirle was based on a character I had for another story (a dark comedy now in my Junk Ideas folder) about a cynical girl who was so apathetic about her own self-preservation that she ended up being a good ghost hunter because she was incapable of fearing anything.
The Art
[redacted] Life was the first visual novel I’ve made where I collaborated with other artists (before, I’ve collaborated with a writer for The Journey of Ignorance, and a programmer with Three Guys That Paint, but not an artist).
The artists I collaborated with used Trello to help us all stay on the same page.
Above: A screenshot of the Trello board. Source of “Painting reference” image at the top-left: (x)
I basically gave a description of the character/scene, along with reference photos, and the artists ran with it. I wanted this to be fun for the artists, so I tried to give them creative freedom.
Some of the concept and work-in-progress art:
Art by Jaye/@fakemagicjaye:
BONUS:
It was learned that Lisa Frank tarot cards exists. XD
Art by YuukiCrossPudding/@10_Salt:
Art by Kyuu:
Art by me/Katy133/@jkaty133:
The dog in the game is a Shiba Inu. Tirle was originally a woman named Talia. Clara was originally “Lenore Malloy.” I also played around with the idea of giving Hana blue hair.
Rebecca looked older, while Hana looked younger.
I really like Tirle’s concept sketch (near the bottom) for some reason; here it is cropped:
According to my notes above, “Harumi” was originally Hana’s name.
Sketches of background and CG ideas.
Programming
Prior to the start of NaNoRenO, I asked around on Lemmasoft what Ren’Py was capable of, and during NaNo, I was able to learn how to do the following:
Changing the mouse cursor icon mid-game.
Changing the main menu’s/settings menu’s/quit menu’s/save/load menu’s/textbox’s image, depending on the player’s progression.
Creating a custom volume bar in the settings menu.
Customising the save/load menu.
Using persistent data.
How to make imagemaps in Ren’Py.
How to change the speed of a specific line of dialogue.
Creating different character name tag images for each character (one for the mansion game, for the high school romance game, etc).
Creating animated sprites (re: the glitch effects).
Deleting a save (in the middle of the narrative) without a prompt.
Forcing the game to quit without a prompt.
Creating a True Reset (deleting persistent data)
Creating “hackable” text documents that the player can edit.
I learned so much about Ren’Py, and I’ve ended up feeling a lot more comfortable using it and customising my games with it. So hopefully, I’ll be able to use what I’ve learned for my future games.
