i was filming my kittens and the door creaked and A CAT I’VE NEVER SEEN BEFORE DECIDED TO COME IN MY ROOM
“Oh shit fam my bad. Wrong house.”
“what the fuck, c'est quoi ce chat??” is a great sentence
zaturnz-barz-deactivated2017071 asked:
oooh have you ever done a post about the ridiculous mandatory twist endings in old sci-fi and horror comics? Like when the guy at the end would be like "I saved the Earth from Martians because I am in fact a Vensuvian who has sworn to protect our sister planet!" with no build up whatsoever.
vintagegeekculture answered:
Yeah, that is a good question - why do some scifi twist endings fail?
As a teenager obsessed with Rod Serling and the Twilight Zone, I bought every single one of Rod Serling’s guides to writing. I wanted to know what he knew.
The reason that Rod Serling’s twist endings work is because they “answer the question” that the story raised in the first place. They are connected to the very clear reason to even tell the story at all. Rod’s story structures were all about starting off with a question, the way he did in his script for Planet of the Apes (yes, Rod Serling wrote the script for Planet of the Apes, which makes sense, since it feels like a Twilight Zone episode): “is mankind inherently violent and self-destructive?” The plot of Planet of the Apes argues the point back and forth, and finally, we get an answer to the question: the Planet of the Apes was earth, after we destroyed ourselves. The reason the ending has “oomph” is because it answers the question that the story asked.
My friend and fellow Rod Serling fan Brian McDonald wrote an article about this where he explains everything beautifully. Check it out. His articles are all worth reading and he’s one of the most intelligent guys I’ve run into if you want to know how to be a better writer.
According to Rod Serling, every story has three parts: proposal, argument, and conclusion. Proposal is where you express the idea the story will go over, like, “are humans violent and self destructive?” Argument is where the characters go back and forth on this, and conclusion is where you answer the question the story raised in a definitive and clear fashion.
The reason that a lot of twist endings like those of M. Night Shyamalan’s and a lot of the 1950s horror comics fail is that they’re just a thing that happens instead of being connected to the theme of the story.
One of the most effective and memorable “final panels” in old scifi comics is EC Comics’ “Judgment Day,” where an astronaut from an enlightened earth visits a backward planet divided between orange and blue robots, where one group has more rights than the other. The point of the story is “is prejudice permanent, and will things ever get better?” And in the final panel, the astronaut from earth takes his helmet off and reveals he is a black man, answering the question the story raised.
IIRC “Judgment Day” was part of the inspiration for the excellent Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode “Far Beyond the Stars.”
This whole post is liquid gold for writers.
I pour the gold in water and drink it
Controversial opinion, but ur allowed to like things that suck
Like, sometimes there are just shows or books that are so goddamn awful for any number of reasons… But ya still like ‘em somehow, and that’s fine
It’s not required to write a 20+ page essay defending why you enjoy something shitty, you can just… Enjoy shitty things
Not all content is made equally and you’re allowed to like things that are far from perfect
Like, just, “This show sucks, but I like it anyway” is a totally valid response
“It’s comforting,” is a legit answer.
“I like reading about clothes,” is a legit answer.
“it’s brain popcorn, and I don’t feel like delving into something deep,” is a legit answer.
“I’ve read it so many times I can basically recite it, and it relaxes me by being familiar,” is a legit answer.
You don’t need to justify your taste. Stop feeling guilty about liking things, or liking the “wrong” things. Life is hard and bleak right now, get fun where you can.
Anonymous asked:
So I'm having trouble writing an antagonist. I want him to suffer from a trauma when he's a kid so it would justify his actions (since I want him to be forgiven by the protagonists) but I can't find a backstory good enough for him. Any help?
fuckyeahcharacterdevelopment answered:
I would like to draw your attention, first of all, to this post here. A traumatic or tragic past really shouldn’t serve to justify the actions of an antagonist or otherwise morally-divergent character. All that information can really do is allow the reader/main character(s) to understand why this character has acted in such a way. It doesn’t make their actions okay though…
As for coming up with backstories, the only thing I can suggest - as I suggest often - is to question your story. If you’re creating an antagonist, then I assume you have a world and story setting already. You probably have an protagonist, as well as other characters.
It’s a common misconception that a ‘story’ is made up of events or happenings (that would be plot). In truth, a story is created by a character and their actions, aka, the things they choose to do. You will be able to construct your antagonist’s backstory once you begin to look at how they are linked to the other characters you have in your cast, and look at what decisions that 1) these other characters have made, versus, 2) the decisions your antagonist has made, to get them all to where they are at the beginning of the story.
Your antagonist has to have a good reason for opposing the protagonist. It can’t just be, ‘because I need someone to oppose the protagonist’. In what way are these two involved, and what has occurred between them to pit them against each other in such a way?
If they haven’t met yet, or only meet during or at the beginning of the story, in what way does each one’s past make an impression on their future to put them at odds. By this I mean… is it political beliefs that divide them? Cultural experiences? Classism? Race? What bigger picture exists around them to make them against one another?
A person’s background is complicated after all. It is just the same for your characters. And it doesn’t have to be ‘tragic’ or ‘traumatic’ for a character’s antagonistic actions to be ‘understandable’.
Look at a character like Loki, for example, in the Marvel movies. Up until he learnt of his true origin, he was raised in a loving, caring environment. His adoptive mother especially loved him as much as she loved Thor, and Odin didn’t have to bring Loki in. There was a genuine affection there; Loki wasn’t emotionally or physically abused, he wasn’t isolated from everyone, and his parents didn’t a make a point of how ‘different’ he was to Thor in any obvious way.
It was Loki himself who took his origin to be a reason why his parents hadn’t pushed him to lead, etc. Because he couldn’t see his own flaws, he put it on them, to make it look like it was their fault, and that they were leaving him out in some way. As viewers though, we can understand why he might come to that conclusion. We can see how a younger Loki might have looked at his brother and his family, and felt isolated or different, even if they weren’t the ones to encourage those feelings in him.
So don’t restrict yourself to the ‘tragic’ antagonist’s backstory if you don’t feel like there’s any reason for one.
Anyway… since this is a question seen often around the writing tumblr community, I’ll point you in the direction of more detailed resources:
Resources
- What to do with your antagonist
- How To Write The Bad Guy
- Creating an Antagonist
- Creating Memorable Characters: Antagonists
- FYCD Previous Answer: Creating Believable/Purposeful Antagonists
- FYCD ‘Sympathetic Villains’ tag
Otherwise, best of luck, Anon! I hope this helps.
- enlee
why are sun bears like…that?
like what
oh you mean that
well
sometimes it just be like that
yourfavouritedoll