@@jerubaal101 No, making a good livestream is difficult XD So they have to actually set it up, which does take some figuring out Gotta find the guests to do this, and schedule to get everyone together for several hours Then you also have to have a bunch of cumulative knowledge to be interesting while talking Also as this series has clearly pointed out; It's apparently super difficult to be analytical of media while being able to accurately prove those statements so you're just wrong man XD
@@critespranberry8872 Taking a poop is really difficult. You gotta decide what you want to eat so you can have a good poop. Then you need to clear your schedule, make sure none of your friends are coming by. You have to use a ruler to make sure the diameter of the toilet bowl is big enough. Find your poop knife just in case. Finally, you need to find your squatty potty and a joke book. But seriously. The idea that an EFAP livestream takes as much time or nearly as much effort is a typical 1 hour Mauler video is farcial, Plus, livestreams get so much more revenue from superchats. I wish we got more Mauler videos, but I understand why does it. Besides, a lot of this content isn't really worth making a real video on. They indirectly address this when someone tries to say "they spent six hours talking about me!" And then they cut it up and it was only 45 minutes of actual discussion.
@@jerubaal101 I mean, have you seen some of the super cuts that mauler has made for efaps? Yes the actual act of making the EFAP itself like recording it is arguably easy, but that's not what EFAP is
Hollywood really has such a feeling of *VERSIMILITUDE!* I really am able to *BELEIVE* that I'm being ripped off by an industry of terrible untalented hacks that actively hate the audience and everything that the average person stands for.
I'm the person Jon was talking about at 35:10 who sent him an email about "Not wanting themes" in my story lol. It wasn't that I explicitly didn't want a story, I just had a story idea without necessarily starting at or fleshing out a theme in the beginning. I think what the guys were saying before was right, that you can write a story that eventually comes into a theme without necessarily articulating it. You can just think of a conflict of ideas you find interesting, or a situation in life people find themselves in and want to build a world and story around it and a "moral of the story" or theme just happens naturally.
Though structuring a story around a single coherent theme can greatly increase its depth, I think it's very difficult to write a story well without themes and NOT have them form naturally. With the use of setups/payoffs, you're already establishing a theme with whatever actions are taken by a character. If I just write a super simple story about a man who takes revenge on someone, and dies, then the theme that arises inconsequentially is just revenge is a dangerous road. That said, naturally developed themes will NOT have the same storytelling impact as themes that are woven into the entire story as they'll be surface level and won't really go far beyond a couple characters. It's ideal to try and do both. If you have a theme that's super simple and wide-scope, it's really easy to tie it into all the characters and their motivations. You can then also apply it to visual storytelling, and symbolism. Now you have plot, characters, and a sort of second story way back behind that which can be told utilizing basically anything. It gives so much more depth. Better Call Saul is my go-to example, since its theme is pretty at odds with storytelling itself. It's a story about people who can't change, so the entire show is an exploration of all the avenues they try and take only to end up right back where they started. Themes make good stories great, they just won't make bad stories good. A fuck-up with characters/plot is a lot more consequential.
stories that are structured to be thematically consistent are more satisfying than those structured to be narratively consistent. the latter creates a "predictable" story, where any reader satisfaction will primarily come from the feeling of "the thing i thought would happen, happened! i was right! i'm so smart!", which imo is incredibly boring. theme does more than give your story a "moral message" or whatever, it's a framework to tie the more abstract design decisions together in a rhythmic way. i'd say that if you write a story without even the broadest theme in mind, your decision-making process is going to product the most generic slop imaginable
@metalsludge8205 Sure, however the story still need it's narrative to be coherent otherwise the whole thing may break apart under it's own weight. TLJ had themes about 'failure' yet look at how that turned out. Granted execution was shit, but it had somewhat a consistent theme, terrible as it was. I say a healthy dose of both is the way to go.
Yeah I don't like writers starting with "I'm gonna write a story about XY and Z" but they never actually get around to telling the damn story. The best themes are the ones that sneak up on you and retroactively make the whole story work. The story is one that's worth telling in and of itself, and comes together into a fine point of it's own accord. Like, as the writer of you already know everything there is to know about the story, you already know what everything represents, you already know exactly what the audience is supposed to think about every scene; _why even bother writing it?_
In my experience, Rags' assumption about how most (yes MOST) writers start writing their material without explicit themes in mind is more common than you'd think. Most writers I know (and speaking for myself too) start with a concept or character theyd like to noodle a story around. They start with a very specific idea like "what if being Death was a job and it was someone's first day" or "what about a kidnap story and we do a duo POV between the kidnapped person and the person searching for them" and the story grows from there. Its that simple. And that might result in a short story, a full novel, or a massive series. It's far more organic than engineered, and starts small as something the writer finds they have the urge to write on a character or concept level rather than some over arching idea that they them construct entire worlds and plots around. I find that once your central little spark for the story or concept has been developed, the unifying themes, internal morality, and messaging emerge later, especially once characters and world are better defined, and other people have had eyes on the story (editors, beta readers, other writers). I find most writers who start with theme and decide "it's gonna be a story about this and THIS is the point and THIS is what I wanna say" often end up writing themselves into corners and writing characters who start acting in contradiction to themselves in service of the theme, and it ends up damaging the story because things dont progress to their natural conclusion and characters dont act how they should because THEME. Midnight Mass is a massive offender on this front, where after a certain number of episodes, the story and characters go completely off the rails in service of THEME and imagery. A fascinatingly refreshing efap on the writing process.
Yep this is how you're supposed to write a story. I've quite literally never once thought about what theme my story has. My original concept was what if we have a hero and a villain in the same body. Yes not exactly original as Hulk and Jackal and Hyde have long since existed but hardly such a thing as an original concept nowadays. I think it makes for some super fun inner monologues and story choices. Constantly having the villain whispering to the hero at his lowest, preying on his inner weaknesses. At times the story will force the hero to make a choice, give the villain control to possibly win and save the day or don't and live with the consequences.
Story I'm writing right now started as a dumb joke about a tech CEO having too many android wives who all start making demands and getting conflicting hobbies; and then the thought occurred to me: Shit. He _definitely_ made them bang people they didn't wanna bang; that's gonna be a huge problem for them if they decide to become normal people after he's gone. They're not gonna know how to trust anybody or have normal self esteem or life priorities. Like even after they're declared "legally human" they're still gonna need years of therapy and interventions because they grew up under cult conditions. I don't need to write it because it's a story about "What it means to be human", I'm just really invested in homegirl getting her waffle-shop approved despite her trauma and ambiguous human rights.
A little off topic but is writing still a viable career now a days I would love to do something involved in that but I’m un sure on if that’s something that’s realist now a days or even how I would start getting into that field, just asking because you seem to speak like you have some experience.
@@maninthemask6275 Like anything, you have to start small. Beginning with the expectation/hope of making it somewhere generally leads to disappoint. It's a rough truth that a vanishingly small minority of people working towards success in any creative field gain enough of an audience to do it professionally. Keeping expectations realistic, and your work as a creative hobby and not the focus of your attention, is the key to not getting burnt out and keeping your spirits high if you don't end up getting anywhere. That was a bit of a downer, so here's some pieces of advice that may help you get started. The best tip I've ever gotten in regards to refining your creative process, ESPECIALLY when you're just beginning, is to set a tiny goal and meet that standard every day. In regards to writing (I assume script or book writing), a good place to start is around 100 words a day, or maybe 5 minutes if you would prefer a time limit. If you're into it and are in the flow and don't want to stop, keep going past your goal and write until you feel satisfied. This might seem like too little effort to get anywhere quick, but the goal is to build a habit, not finish your project in record time. As long as you're making some amount of progress, you're winning. Some forward progression is INFINITELY better than none. Keep doing this until you feel that your goal is too small, then consider extending it, working it into your schedule more and more. Burnout is the death of any creative work, so avoid that at all costs by carefully limiting yourself. I've had to learn this lesson the hard way when I pushed myself to write 2000 words a day to meet a self-set deadline for a project on top of a 40-hr workweek, and completely killed my investment in continuing. Remember, keep it as a hobby. It might also be prudent to start with an easy project. This can be helpful to both gain skill as a writer and gain an understanding of what finishing a project feels like, from start to finish. It's tempting to jump in with some crazy idea for a story that you feel would make a great finished product, but it's better to temper your steel in less dangerous waters. This is also something that I would change about how I started, as my first project ended up being an hour-long, fully scripted video that I wasn't at all prepared for. You also mentioned whether or not it's realistic to get into the field to begin with. It can be frustrating putting your work out there without it gaining traction, but this is a great time to be attempting creative endeavors. In this age, the Internet is your best friend. There's next to no barrier between creatives and the public, and more importantly, the necessity of having a publisher has vanished as well. If you know where to put your work, how to market it, and what kinds of people might be interested in consuming it, the road to success becomes much more clear. Unfortunately, writing on it's own is hard to market or present in a way that will generate traction. The Internet, especially the most popular places where creative works can gain a following such as TH-cam or Twitter, heavily favor content that is audio-visual as opposed to strictly visual. Even within the realm of strictly visual works, writing is stuck in the tough position of being composed of words. That sounds stupid, but something like a comic is far, far easier for the average Internet goer to consume that writing. The format of these sites favors it. If you're writing a script, then naturally there may be some accompanying visual to go along with it. It's easier said than done, but trying to find someone who will use your script for one of their projects could be helpful, although I would expect the chances of this happening are close to zero if you don't already know anyone (I wouldn't even know how to go about it). If your writing a story, things are much easier. Getting a book published with a physical release is fairly easy as far as I can tell, considering you can find heaps upon heaps of absolute nonsense with blatant grammatical errors, factual inaccuracies, and terrible structure that have somehow made it onto Amazon with an official publisher. From there, you can hope and pray that it gets noticed by critics or other outlets and gains some fans, but that's a crapshoot. I'm not at all familiar with how works gain a critical reception in the first place, so maybe there's some writing competitions you could enter your work into and maybe get something out of, both in terms of writing practice and popularity. Definitely worth looking into. Ultimately, making it in the world of creatives is hard, but there's hope. I myself am an aspiring art critic, so I'm with you that it can seem daunting to even begin. Hopefully the things I've said above are helpful, it's been interesting mulling over this in my head as I've been writing it.
"Thank you for your submission and for thinking of our agency/publishing house as a potential home for your story. Unfortunately, we read your sample chapters, and in no uncertain terms, your writing ruined our day. We wish you the best of luck on your querying journey." This sort of rejection just for me then?
It was actually feedback from a beta reader who is also an editor for a small press. We're friends and he was half-joking half-being cruel to be kind. My sample chapters were ass.
I think the point is like when teachers are like the curtains being blue means sorrow and sadness and then you email the author and he says bro idk I needed a color so I picked blue.
yeah, you can always over-interpret something and see deliberation were none was. We can never truly know the author's intention with anything, maybe a seemingly superficial element had a deeper meaning, maybe a perceived allusion to a specific concept was just coincidental. It could be the author or the audience either huffing their own farts or being dilettantish. Your personal take away from a story is very important, but you shouldn't disregard the authorial intention.
a billionaire with unresolved trauma spends his money and resources punching Betty criminals to fight crime instead of spending his resources to build infrastructure to fight rampant poverty, yeah batman is your hero up till to reach the ripe old age of 16 then you have to grow up
@@ALCATRAZx29 Not enough rampant crime and corruption is a systemic problem that requires systemic change, i always found it funny how Batman sends criminals to Arkham Asylum for rehab or something yet fails to realize that that institution is so corrupt that the doctors are turning into active criminals, these things are way too mature for the avg teenage comic reader so let's just have him punch criminals it's way more interesting that way (although the new batman films are looking to engage with these themes so you never know)
Here's the _actual_ biggest mistake every failed writer makes: Taking every piece of criticism as an immutable all-or-nothing. Whether that's ”well they don't get my intellect so fuck them” or "I got this feedback that's 100% what I need to do so I'll change my entire personality until I'm what they want". When professionals talk about feedback, it's usually the attitude of "well that was only 30% correct, but it DID help me done in on the part that IS the issue and by tweaking something a scene earlier the next audience didn't have that issue". Criticism is super useful, but it doesn't need to be taken literally as only being the thing you thought it was when you first heard it. The person could mean something entirely different, or they could be wrong about the criticism but correct in identifying that SOMETHING is wrong there they just don't know what.
If it's formulated in the right way, criticism can be a great window to the audience's perception, something the writer cannot fully account for. "Ahh, this scene of x, y and z gave this impression but for them it lacked pieces such as a, b and c to make it feel more whole for them."
"know your audience" and "know your intent" are the two principles to bear in mind when filtering criticism. "is this criticism valid" is something not enough novice creatives ask themselves before choosing to accept it blindly (lack of confidence) or reject it outright (narcissism)
There's a piratesoftware short on it, but the TL;DR is this: He had a case of someone complaining about a game segment. The criticism was wrong, but the game segment was still massively boring to play through. Thus, he reworked the segment of his game and everyone was better off.
I rarely see people talking about the subtext of One Punch Man, probably because it's seen as a goofy parody, but it has one of my favorite themes, being the power of self-improvement. Saitama is a character that broke his limits through hard work, buy it came at the cost of extreme boredom. Monsters represent a perverted form of self-improvement, in that they sacrifice their humanity for strength, and genos whole storyline is about trying to catch up to Saitama through upgrades. Not only that, but Saitama has the ability to inspire the people around him to better themselves, not just Genos. And he often does it just by being himself. It's a very interesting dynamic that can only work with Saitama as the protagonist.
Mumen Rider's whole arc is unironically a life lesson for me. How while everyone else is chasing after clout and appearances, Saitama values the fuck out of Rider not because he's the best but because he shows up to do his part even though he'll most definitely die. Rider just really wants to do the right thing and doesn't worry about whether or not other people notice it; other people's opinions are their own job, he just focuses on what he can do and lets other people be other people.
It’s a parody of a genre whose most central theme tends to be self-improvement, if only secondary to sacrifice for the ones you love being more potent than lust for personal gain. So Saitama subverting it all by being insanely strong without seeming have earned it doesn’t facilitate me personally feeling like self improvement is all that important in that universe. To stay true to the genre it’s parodying, all the other characters of course need to stay hella motivated and inspired by Saitama… somehow.
I’d be curious if MauLer is the type to apply his work ethic to subjects he has no interest in or if he’s not as thorough and diligent. Like just assuming he didn’t like geography or something, we he still have put as much effort into those assignments as subjects he did like?
@reginlief1 It's not a compulsion thing for him. He's not oversharing or blurting. He's just thorough. If he needed to write to 1000 words I doubt he'd have a problem doing so because he's fully aware that his own works contain a lot of chaff that he could cut. He doesn't cut down to the core though because he doesn't need to and short form works are by necessity less comprehensive.
@@lokenontherange yeah I’m more so just curious if he wished to excel at any assignment he tried his hand at or only for those he was passionate about. It’s hard to tell because he’s clearly only put out content on topics he’s passionate about. I guess that’s why my question is more for my own musing than actually seeking an answer.
46:04 I'd have to say Nick Fury. I used to really respect that character. He'd come on to the screen and I'd go 'oh shit, Fury's here! This is about to get real!' Now, he's a damaged old man. He has lost all of his mystique. He has nothing left to respect. Total character assassination, even going as far as to wipe his past to make him look worse. You folks are spot on with the assessment. That's why I love these longmen!
Starship troopers and Barbie comes to mind. Both movies so incompetent at delivering the directors political satire they create a completely different story for the viewers.
@@cyrus2395incredibly. After reading the book, it does not even speak the same language. It's a mockery of the book without knowing the book at all. And it still ended up making the Federation era seem like a better future than what is currently happening.
*Julian Appears To Have Died. Timestamps 0:00 EFAP Microphone Autism. 1:30 This Week's Theme & Rag's Poorly Phrased Question. 6:20 The 3 Tiers/Levels of Media Literacy. 15:00 The Definition and Execution of Theme (1) 37:30 The Rigidity of The Fundamentals of Writing: Plot, Worldbuilding, Characters and Theme. 41:00 Who's Your First Pick For Assassinated Character? 55:00 The Closer Look's "You're Writing Themes Wrong." 57:10 The Theme Is a Topic. 59:12 Henry's Contradictory Visuals (1). 1:02:31 Harold's Rejection. 1:10:18 Pause 2 & Not Enough Information. 1:12:40 Plot Twist, Execution of Theme (2) & Not Having a Theme. 1:16:50 A Lowercase "U" & You Got To Get Specific. 1:26:47 The Justice System vs Justice, The Theme of Randomness, Always broad & Destroying Your Own Point. 1:32:00 Theme Being a Topic Is Stupid & Specifics 1:37:50 Precision, Accuracy & The Dart Board. 1:51:28 Harold's Story & Multiple Themes Are Bad. 2:07:25 Theme Is a Question. 2:18:21 Justifiable Murder, Henry's "Bare Bones Structure" & Contradictory Visuals (2). 2:31:50 Intuition. 2:49:00 Constraints & a Debate. 2:58:40 Is Power Inherently Corrupting? & a "Clear" Story. 3:14:22 Child Vs Adult Storytelling. 3:30:30 Audiences Hate Purely Evil Characters & Some Themes Are Better Than Others. 3:34:00 The Correlation Between Theme and How Thought Provoking Your Story Is/ Kicking a Dog. 3:45:45 The Protagonist and Antagonist Must Disagree on Their Goals + Not Knowing What Writing Is Despite Being a Writer. 3:50:00 All Stories Need An Ideological Conflict. 4:15:09 Planning Vs Improvising a Story & a Character Learning a Lesson = Theme. 4:39:10 The Themes of Shawshank. 4:50:20 Rapid Fire Examples. 5:03:40 The Dark Knight Rises Is Good & Best Superhero Movie. 5:14:40 Nebula & Video Ends. 5:28:10 The Thumbnail Was Meaningless. 5:29:50 The Panel. 5:35:36 Bye!
First Headmetwall, then Julian Doe, Now Patrick Bliss? Every time the torch falls, another Fapper picks it up and keeps lighting the way. Thank you for your contribution.
You don't need a guilty person for an innocent person to be unjustly imprisoned. You can have situation wherein a person committed an act, and there's a dispute as to whether that constitutes a crime. Kyle Rittenhouse killed two people, he shot them. There was a rigorous attempt by a corrupt assistant DA to send him to prison for this. But he was innocent. The event was not a crime.
I whole heartedly disagree. Rittenhouse was acting in self defense, but it is not a corrupt action to attempt a murder charge in a case of self defense. Self defense is a purely affirmative defense, making an otherwise illegal action legal. We ought to test affirmative defenses in a court of law. Those attempts ought to be rigorous. Additionally, it’s a situation that I can point to now to show how deranged certain people were in attacking this guy without any understanding of the actual situation. The court testing his defense and exonerating him was good actually.
@@joshuaneuhauser It was plainly self-defense from word go. So instead of letting this poor kid get on with his life the assistant DA dragged him into court and used time and resources he could have spent otherwise. (he admitted in court that he'd be prosecuting his own witnesses if he wasn't using them for witnesses in this case) Also Little Finger used a lot of dirty tactics in this thing, including trying to get the kid on a gun charge that I, as someone with no law degree, knew didn't apply after reading it ONCE. And he has a history of trying that with other people. So yeah he tries to get people he knows are innocent thrown in prison for political brownie points. Also when his theory of the case fell apart he changed his entire story and tried to get him on some other angle thereforto never brought up, based on nothing but a need to ruin a teenager's life. He wasn't looking for the truth, he was trying to get a kid put away. Fuck that guy and fuck that case.
13:00 One Punch Man is a great example of a parody that understands and is respectful of the tropes that it pokes at. Nearly every fight is a high-octane, over the top action anime between Genos (the typical shonen protagonist) and some villain, until he loses and Saitama (the shows main protagonist) begrudgingly defeats the enemy with a single punch. He’s grown so powerful that no enemy can present a challenge for him, and being a hero (his life’s dream) has become boring and deflating as a result.
I think _The Room_ is a positive "Low Accuracy, High Precision" Tommy was aiming to make a riveting sexual drama, but instead he accidentally created a comedy masterpiece. Another example would be _The Guns of Navarone,_ which was intended by everyone involved to be a scathing anti-war film showcasing its unforgiving brutal nature and how it turns good Men against each other; but they accidentally made an inspirational pro-war film reminding you what the true cost of defeat is and how hard war will test you, and why anyone could fall victim to its threats and abuses which is exactly why you should fight back. The makers were confused and horrified when people enlisted in droves after watching their flick. The movie genuinely works as both interpretations. And of course there's _Avatar: The Way of Water,_ which is accidentally a 1-to-1 representation of what happens to every deadbeat expat dad who thinks he can move to another continent and marry a local to run away from his problems back home. The burning bridges with every new neighbors you move to, the wife getting fed up with your bullshit, the constantly needing to lecture your kids about not embarrassing the family or upsetting the hosts; James Cameron has no idea how hard he called out every expat dad--he genuinely thinks Sully is the hero and his wife doesn't hate him.
I was thinking of Barbie being a high precision, low accuracy movie. Greta made a great story about Ken, but I doubt she intended to. I remember walking out of The Kingsman 2 and wondering wtf it was trying to say, low on both counts.
The thing with many fables is that they contain multiple lessons, and the lesson depends on the audience. The tortoise and the hare is "even if you are supremely talented, you will be overtaken if you laze about" when talking to a child who goes "but I'm the best anyway so why should I practice?" It is "you can still succeed if you put in the work" when telling the story to a child who is worried about not being good enough to win, because not all talented people will develop their talents so they will plateau. "Be the tortoise and the hare" seems silly to me as a lesson to draw from it. One cannot choose to be talented. One can only decide to practice and put in the work. Now we could go into what parts of what we call talent are actually the result of practice, and which bits are the result of born in properties, but that doesn't relate to the fable. The difference in talent between the tortoise and the hare is decidely biological.
Seems like the worst thing to happen to "Themes" is them becoming synonymous with Modern Art and how it intentionally lacks any creative meaning so that snobs can force meaning themselves. Especially if people look at it from the mindset of old Fables and the like where each could end with, "So the Moral of the story is..." "Ah yes, I believe this media tells us of the human experience. Our capacity to undergo great adversity to become a better self," I say as I watch Blue's Clues. The Theme of a piece of media can be extremely broad, where it can have multiple, be fairly complex or even relatively simple and common. Hell, you look at a lot of Japanese manga/anime and you'll see a lot of basic themes that is just the simple foundation of the setting and characters within. Several of my favorite series from there can be said to have the same theme of, "Empathy is good." But the story and setting is wildly different for each one. It's sort of like how the Hero's Journey is used as a basic outline for storytelling, or as a descriptor to help clue you in on what the story is going to be about. Just as saying that the story is a Mystery, RomCom etc.
if you think a theme is the same as some in-your-face "moral" then you have yet to break out of the mindset of Art as Propaganda. you don't have to pick up on the "theme" of a work to enjoy it, either. if other people derive a certain interpretation and find value in it, it's not some indictment against the work itself if you don't derive the same. IMO the whole "this work means this and you can't view it any other way" discourse is annoying, and devalues whatever work it's being directed at. basically what that smarmy Ethan fellow did a few episodes back
I think he has problems when plotting, but in On Writing, Stephen King made, what i think, is a great statement about theme: “Starting with the questions and thematic concerns is a recipe for bad fiction. Good fiction always begins with story and progresses to theme.”
@@christopherkelley1664 it was certainly autobiographical in the front half, but I thought his central focus on the importance of writing first drafts “door closed”, the importance of correct grammar, the process of editing, and the overall importance of having a daily writing schedule and sticking to it were all perhaps obvious, but useful. His idea that you write your story first, get the draft finished and then after your first revision start looking for recurrent themes and supporting imagery and plot moments makes the most sense to me personally. But, I think theme(s) can be in your mind at any point in the process, beginning, middle, or end and that this video telling anyone that to do anything different is wrong is just pretentious nonsense. He also makes, what I believe is the very valid point that if you want to pursue the craft as a career you must read a lot and write a lot. King fails quite a bit on his plotting and structure. But, especially in his golden era, he wrote great characters and could put you right in the situation with excellent detail. Beyond that, even if you hate his writing, his use of grammar and grammatical structure is very hard to attack.
@@Jaded.Hero.Worship Yeah, he has a great style and his characters are very real. He's middling on the rest. Doing coke in a trailer closet while blasting music does seem like excellent writing praxis all around so I do think that's good advice. Maybe I'm just mad he recommended EB White's Elements of Style, which is unremarkable and has some kind of middling advice as far as fiction writing goes. There were a few other things that kind of got under my skin in King's book too. Did he ever write anything else about writing? He wrote that a million years ago. I'd definitely say Maximum Overdrive was theme-heavy, lmao.
I don’t think LOTR was written with themes directly in mind. It was written to be a story first, with Tolkien’s personal morals sprinkled in. His morals and the “themes” in LOTR come from his religion and his personal experience in WWI. His incredibly positive outlook on the world (as opposed to G R R Martin’s negative outlook) unites thematic ideas in a coherent way.
@Edax_Royeaux I mean, I guess that depends on what you view as industry. We don't see smog-belching factories in Minas Tirith, but it would require a lot of industry to create and then continually support a city like that. I assume his issue with humanity's industriousness is when it comes explicitly at the cost of all the life around it, choking cities, and burning the countryside. The hobbits are quite industrious, too. They may be a calm, placid culture, but they produce vast quantities of plant and animal products, just mostly for their own comfort and consumption. Not to mention the collective effort it must take in the earthworks and carpentry of creating a hobbit hole, they must have quite a system in place, I honestly want to see how they go about it. Industry may not be shown in an explicitly positive light, but I'd argue it is shown in an implicitly positive light, where you can see it, but it's like when you're just going about your day, you don't think about all the things that went exactly as expected, it's the unexpected things that stick out. An imperfect metaphor, I guess, but rampant industrialization at the cost of everything around it is what Tolkien hated, not just industry in and of itself.
One thing about themes, is that they are often representation of the writer's worldview. The writer may not intend a specific theme, but their morals can be reflected in the writing and thus a theme is born.
@@thuglifebear5256isn't that the whole difference though? Writing a story around your themes or have them crop up and evolve organically vs injecting them.
Them talking about the tortise and the hare makes me think of Cyanide and Happiness. Where the hare wins, but the tortoise watches the hare's entire family live and die until there are none left. Leaving him the ultimate winner.
Why does everyone forget about Han being assassinated in tfa? He goes on this great arch from a selfish smuggler to a fearless hero and leader, and they literally revert his arch to bring him back to where he was pre anh, divorced, and dead beat dad with son the next space hitler.
In my country in 7th grade in literature classes at school we learn that there are 3 fundamental things about any written piece of art. 1. Theme - is a broad topic that this piece is exploring and talking about. 2. Problem - is the question which is connected to the Theme that author of this piece is asking, a more narrow topic that author is exploring. 3. Idea - is a result of the narrow exploration, an answer to the question of the Problem. Of course most of the novels, stories, script or any other piece of written work have at least a few Themes, Problems and Ideas. And if you are paying attention in the classes this stuff just burns into your skull. So it was interesting and odd at the same time to hear your and Closer Look’s takes about this topic and juggling of the words “theme” and “idea” (ngl your takes were 100% reasonable while CL’s were questionable at best)
Ugh. That one bit where he talked about how in film school he didn't like that he was asked to make a short film in 4 hours containing a specific prop bugs me because in schools like that you always have those guys who are like "But I don't wanna do that. It's too limiting." Here's the thing. If you want to do whatever you want with your art, do that, but that isn't what those schools are teaching you. You're not going to be given a million dollars to make whatever movie you want to make immediately after graduation, you're going to have at least a few situations where you have to make a toothpaste commercial or something and need to make a short film featuring the specific brand of toothpaste. That's the real purpose of those exercises, dummy, and if you don't realize that maybe you shouldn't be in that specific industry and should just do it as a hobby.
He didn't complain about it for being limitting, I'm pretty sure he doesn't have a problem with limitations, in fact, his show "Arby N' The Chief" that he's been doing for years is based on a pretty big limitation so there's that for starters. The difference here is that that's not a limitation, it's an imposition "you MUST use this prop". A limitation would be more like "here's all the props you have available to you, make the best of it, use whatever you want or don't, either way it's up to you but this is all you have". What Jon was talking about is very forceful and not conducive to exploration of ideas since you have to necessarily use something in the story for no other reason other than that it was dictated to you. It's hard to stay true to where a story needs to go if you're forced to use a prop, especially when that rule isn't even coming from a good reason or from something related to the story. That's the comparison Jon was making, forcing a theme off the bat where you don't even fully know what the story is and forcing it to stay because it's what was already decided is very forceful and non-sensical whereas the alternative is "oh, I'm finally getting an idea of where the story is going or what I want, how do I use what I have to tell that story? What do I prioritize so that in the worst case scenario the important stuff is still there?" Etc. Impositions get in the way of that. Not saying you can't make something good out of it but it doesn't seem the best approach to me
I've been through that frustration with game jams and the feeling never goes away, but not because the theme is limiting, but because it sounds stupid and getting it to a point where it is something you'd want to do would distort the meaning of it so much, it feels like cheating.
@@ProxyDoug Oh, that's cool! What game jams were you in? I joined 1 last year (godot wild jam). Meant to do more but got busy and then a friend proposed a game idea so I've been working on that. I get it for jams, there needs to be a way of evaluating your games and if the theme is whatever, people will submit games they've been working on for a lot longer, but I do get what you're saying, it's one of the most worrying parts of it all for me, but even though it can suck sometimes, it can also be the nice kind of limitation, it really depends on what the theme is, you have to be a bit lucky with that
@@ITBahren I participated on Ludum Dare around 3 times, Samyam's game jam a while ago and a few smaller ones. The flipside of having a theme to work around is that sometimes it just sucks working from zero, like, just do whatever, it's always good to be able to narrow it down.
I think that for a story, 'theme' is like a key for a piece of music. Even if you're not intending for there to be a specific key that you play in for a song, if it sounds good it's because you accidentally played in key. You see that with certain musicians who literally don't know what a key is and just play notes until they come up with something that matches with other things in a song. I think that theme is the same way. Like, yeah, you could just have a character fight a dragon but that wouldn't be satisfying, so you have to introduce conflict, story beats, character traits, and eventually if the story becomes good you'll have themes, even if you never intended those themes to exist.
I need to know if his character was actually assassinated or if you're just mad that he was yet another victim of the "put a chick in it and make her lame and gay" trend.
@@FringeSpectre he was no longer a clever problem solver, having no idea what to do in any situation and clicking his buttons for voice lines to tell him what to do, believing it was a conscience. Buzz was never dumb, he was just unaware of how the world worked. The other aspect of his character they took was his bond with Woody, they promised to always stay together after Andy grew up, however in the 4th film Buzz repeatedly leaves Woody in extremely dangerous situations without applying any critical thinking. Such as when Woody wants to try again to get Forky after a failed attempt; Woody isn't willing to give up and his friends are chewing him out for getting them hurt, but when he goes to try again and Buzz has to make a choice, he starts asking his 'inner voice' for assistance because he doesn't know what to do, it tells him again and again to abort so he reluctantly leaves. Buzz was naive and silly but he was smart, and incredibly strong willed, but in the 4th film both traits are gone for no reason
@@Whyyoulooking45 The choices characters make are insighted by their beliefs and goals, this is how movies work, and the fourth Toy Story changes a lot about Buzz without justifying it. If these aspects are 'too deep' or unimportant, than why should people even like characters in general?
4:27:24 Tarantino actually explained how the themes came about when writing Reservoir Dogs. It's kind of how Jon surmises; it just started as a fun bottle-story concept to play around in. But then Tarantino noticed in the much later drafts as it was nearing production time that throughout the story he kept gravitating to this sort of father-son dynamic between Keitel and Mr. Orange, and he realized that was the spark that held the rest of the movie together. All the stuff with the big boss taking Keitel under his wing, the boss' son, the son's best friend Mr. Blond whom the big boss also sees as a son. It all clicked into place that that HAS to be the ending climax; Keitel pleading with his father-figure to spare his wounded son-figure. All of that was there in the background subconsciously, but Quentin only realized how it all connected and how necessary every piece was right as he was in the final stages of the script. And it's something he was wary of. "OK. So I got the father-son motif going on and that's cool, but _don't obsess over it too much,_ just let the story be the story and whatever feels like the right ending will present itself over time. The theme stuff, you can always let other people put it into words and study it, but when you're righting you need to stay IN the story and let the story do its thing."
I made notes. Vegans may view the power of tasty cheese as corrupting A puppy dashing toward a cliff may be kicked sideways to save him I think what CapO lost midway was possibly that both protagonist & antagonist could believe in "any means necessary" but have different ends (AKA wants) Romeo & Juliet: can overabundance of hormones & undeveloped brains cause teenagers to do harmful and stupid things?
3:55:20 In Whiplash, Andrew and Fletcher are extremely antagonistic towards each other to the point of severe emotional abuse and physical violence, but they both have the exact same goal.
I had a moment when I heard Mauler say he loves Sicario after fading into the background. Sicario is one of my all time favorites and have wondered for a long time what EFAP thought of it
The throwing of the dice comment Mauler made makes me think of the Dragonlance books. They were written like a DnD campaign, and the story would progress based on dice rolls. So it can be done.
24:48 People argue over genre and the lines a lot trying to treat it like a science. But, I have often found it's better to treat it like marketing. Some genres are a bit more explicit in this but that's what they are useful for in my opinion.
Reminds me of Amazing World of Gumball, the Mom grows a tumor of self doubt and everytime she says something it would go "...or ARE you?" "...Or is it?"
The "turn your theme into a question" is such a film school thing to say. I remember multiple professors say this exact thing to help new writers conceptualize their ideas in a way to help them think about it more deeply. However, in my experience it does not help you to make a better story inherently. If anything it just raises more and more questions. If your theme is a statement, then you can laser focus in on that concept. "Heroes do good vs Are heroes good?" Are two vastly different ideas. The former starts with the premise that you've already decided that you want to tell a story in which a hero does good things, the latter is ambiguous, it's open ended. You don't discover the answer to your theme without doing much more digging into the meat of the concept. Neither approach is inherently better than the other. But my point is that simply turning the theme into a question absolutely does not make it 'tighter', if anything it makes it significantly more loose as it poses multiple infinite questions for you to answer: When does a hero do harm? Can heroism lead to villainy? What happens when a hero becomes corrupted? And so on. Whereas if you're starting with a statement as a theme you know from the very beginning what you want to say with your story and can spend the entire process exploring that specific idea rather than getting bogged down in new questions.
It's a matter of approach. A question is certainly more concrete than a generic concept like 'love' or 'revenge'. And going past that, you don't even have to start with a theme, you can develop a story, have an interesting conflict and characters, and develop a theme from the situation that arises. If you so wish, the tools used to build a house are not the house itself.
@@mrmcawesome9746 That's a strange definition... What does "unlawfully" have to with it if you already can justify it? How is the second sentence a non-sequitor.
@@timewarpdrive77 Plenty of stuff is lawful but unjustifiable, I'm not disagreeing with the original comment for making that distinction, just the definition of the word part cause EFAP crew was clearly looking at one that did say 'unjustifiable'. Everyone knows law and morality are different things, pointing it out is a non-sequitor in an argument about semantics.
as with many things when it comes to art, it depends. "I wanna tell a story about different people coming together to overcome a great challenge" would be an example of a theme being a good start for a story. It can work. Many of the negative examples we have seen, seem to me more like the approach of: "I want to tell a story about x (Halo, Barby, Star Wras, etc) but also include theme y. Again, it can work if you put in the effort... and maybe are talented enough, but it's a lot harder and not that sensible
An interesting story about writing would be Fight Club. People talk about how smart that movie/book are, but that's mainly because everything is explicitly stated and explained in a really on-the-nose way. The reason for that is because his first book got rejected, so instead of making it smarter and more well-written he said "I'm gonna make it dumber, and more ham-fisted."
i dont think dumbing down your satire/commentary so people will "get it" is the way to go, personally. cause even with how hamfisted Fight Club is, there are people that still take away the "wrong" thing from it. pandering to lowest common denominator is bad, actually. make the story you want, and if you put care and attention into it, it will resonate with the right people
@@metalsludge8205 Sure, but, the book and movie go so far as to literally have Tyler explain everything in a really condescending way. That's kinda the deeper point, that the 'smartest' people are the easiest to manipulate because even if you're obviously crazy they're so desperate to not be 'normies' that they'll still follow you. The movie even goes so far as to have the protagonist basically screaming that in people's faces only to have those people respond with "I understand. You want me to go further."
@@metalsludge8205 Also, the point is that his story that he wanted to write DIDN'T resonate with the right people. Like, what he got from the rejection was "Writing what I want? That's a damn lie. I'm gonna write what the idiots want," and it became massively successful. Like, do you want to write what you want and hope that it magically attracts an audience eventually, or do you want people to actually read and enjoy your work, basically? You can't really have both, despite what people say.
Tortoise [and] the hare I particularly enjoy because there's a lesson for everyone involved. The hare is not to rest on your laurels lest losing your goals. The tortoise may be an underdog but be relentless and you can win. Then the story almost turns to the listener and questions "you thought there wasn't a chance admit it. Maybe keep an open mind"
Rambo is another movie like Starship Troopers. Level 1. Kick ass 80’s Action movie. 2. Commentary on Vietnam. 3. Character study of a vet coming home from Vietnam and the struggles he goes through. Etc.
@@forsakenparadise6828 yes I’ve seen it Arch does too. I just stick to the arguments tearing down Douch-hovens sad attempt at turning a flourishing Libertarian society from the book into a fascist dictatorship using surface level bullshit of “LOOK! EAGLE! Dope ass Drip! BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE! SHOWER! MILITARISM! See FEE-ASH-ISMS!”
@@forsakenparadise6828 The only major issue with Carl's video is he skims over the problems that Heinlein's world would have because at the time he was quite convinced of that ideal. His more recent video comparing it to Helldivers is slightly more well considered because he know longer fully buys into Heinlein's liberal ideals.
@@lokenontherange Yeah fair enough critique but I feel the point of the video is that the society in Starship troopers is a liberal one not a fascist one like so many claim it is and Sargon exploring Heinlein’s ideas in the book and what we are presented with in the movie to prove this
I am so lost on Rags' leading brain teaser. Lions and tigers have different anatomy, it's not just the fur separating them. Tigers' bodies look baggier, lions are more toned. Tigers are kinda longer in the midsection, and walk lower, while lions have taller shoulderblades, and the chest is more defined from the belly.
@@SiriusSphynx His interesting factoid was still coming from a place of ignorance, where he was confident enough that stripes were the only thing distinguishing big cats that he thought it'd be a great brain teaser to pose to his friends. It's not like some sin he's committed, it's just that the overflowing confidence is a trait of his that occasionally makes me go Hm. If nothing else, this prologue paralleled the future discussion of "Is there one way to write theme into a story?" Well no there's actually many right answers for solving the same writing conundrum, but this one guy thinks he cracked the code and needs to tell everyone about it.
00:03 Discussion about fictional character inside Discord 02:24 Tigers are good swimmers and have stripey skin as a key identification point. 06:39 Levels of engagement while watching a movie 08:38 Exploring levels of engagement in understanding themes 12:31 Understanding and breaking themes for narrative innovation 14:30 Importance of deliberate and intelligent writing for achieving amazing results 18:29 Ensure story supports the theme 20:13 Simpler themes executed flawlessly are worth more than complex themes that the story does not support. 23:47 Themes can be misunderstood due to their complexity. 25:22 Thematic message: Be on guard against temptation 28:48 Theming overrides character journeys in storytelling. 30:30 Consider the underlying theme when writing a story. 33:33 Themes can be intentional or discovered through the writing process. 35:12 Challenging conventional themes and narrative structures. 38:59 Understanding character perspectives and plot as subjective vs. objective 40:36 Character assassination in fiction 44:08 Discussing character assassination in storytelling 45:54 Nick Fury's character was systematically destroyed 49:20 Embrace your true self regardless of age 50:53 Exploring the theme of mandatory vs optional aspects of growing up 54:01 Luke's belief in redemption drives his character progression. 55:53 Writing themes should not be reduced to neat topics. 59:39 Discussion on the morality of certain actions 1:01:35 Debate on justifiable homicide and justice shortcomings 1:05:19 Discussion on the broadness and specificity of themes in storytelling. 1:07:08 A theme should be specific, not overly broad. 1:10:16 The importance of understanding an author's specific writing approach 1:12:11 Theme unifies the story and requires space and characters. 1:15:55 Importance of having a cohesive theme in writing 1:17:39 Be specific with themes for clarity. 1:21:15 Themes should be explicit but not overly specific 1:23:03 Writers have different inclinations towards ideas and characters 1:26:35 Theme specificity is a balancing act 1:28:35 Different story directions based on themes 1:32:19 Precision in execution is crucial for thematic coherence. 1:34:19 Specificity in themes doesn't guarantee success 1:37:49 Emphasis on execution of themes 1:39:46 Corruptive nature of power drives the story's themes 1:43:20 Balancing accuracy and precision in story themes 1:45:12 Movies fitting different examples 1:48:48 Discussing the interpretation of poorly written stories 1:50:32 Understanding the difference between accuracy and precision 1:54:21 Importance of exploring different perspectives and themes in storytelling 1:55:58 Writing advice lacks depth and usefulness 1:59:20 Exploring the theme of framing and revenge in storytelling 2:01:05 Critique of hyperfocused storytelling and execution 2:04:48 Analyzing story elements and themes 2:06:32 Writing themes as questions 2:10:28 Questioning complexity in writing themes 2:12:22 Consider presenting examples that challenge definitive statements. 2:15:48 Exploring themes through statements helps writers stay focused. 2:17:21 Identifying extremes in writing themes 2:20:58 Discussion on the theme of lungs and skeleton in storytelling 2:22:53 Misrepresentation of justice system in film 2:26:20 Discussion about the morality of killing an individual 2:27:59 Exploring the question of justice system failure in a courtroom setting. 2:31:33 Verdict doesn't bring peace to the guilty 2:33:28 Craft of storytelling is about execution, not just ideas 2:36:56 Theme exploration requires attention and focus. 2:38:53 Intuition works for plot, not for theme. 2:42:08 Believe in your story even if it goes against intuition 2:44:00 Challenges of human evolution in a complex world. 2:47:26 Exploring themes through questions or statements 2:49:24 Limitations breed creativity 2:52:55 Starting with limitations can boost creativity in writing. 2:54:51 Developing a powerful theme for writing 2:58:05 Artistic constraints help navigate infinite possibilities. 2:59:53 Exploring broad questions and subtopics 3:03:16 Exploring power dynamics and corruption through character journeys. 3:05:00 Exploring power corruption without protagonist's gain. 3:08:26 Video discusses the impact of phrasing as statements 3:10:11 Questioning vs. stating as a tool for exploration 3:13:57 Discussing the difference between writing themes for adults and children 3:15:43 Focus on complexity with adult themes in storytelling 3:19:21 Teaching broad principles in storytelling 3:20:52 The enduring value of ancient fables and tales 3:24:21 Themes of classic stories are often misunderstood. 3:25:57 Interpreting themes in stories based on different perspectives 3:29:31 Adult themes vs child themes in storytelling 3:31:24 Creating provoking themes by framing as a question 3:35:32 Analyzing themes through diverse perspectives 3:37:21 Theme exploration goes beyond simple concepts 3:41:01 Discussion on justifiably kicking a dog versus murdering someone 3:43:08 Discussion on the complexity of moral dilemmas 3:46:54 The tortoise and the hair both desire victory. 3:48:44 Can themes be written without extensive knowledge? 3:52:33 Quality of conflict is subjective and can be measured in different ways. 3:54:17 Characters need to want different things for conflict 3:57:42 Theme can be derived from characters' desires. 3:59:37 Key theme is the want for power 4:03:13 Beliefs and desires impact each other 4:05:15 Engage in conversations and seek new knowledge to change beliefs. 4:09:06 Characters' stances influence interactions and themes 4:10:47 Two people with different ideologies working together due to their compatible personalities 4:14:22 Theme formation in storytelling 4:16:09 Consider themes as an integral part of story writing process 4:19:43 Theme is inherent in character actions and lessons learned in a story. 4:21:42 Star Wars lacks explicit moral arguments 4:25:15 Questioning comfortable lies vs uncomfortable truths 4:27:03 Importance of themes in writing 4:30:45 Avoid winging it in writing, be systematic 4:32:22 Creating characters and themes through a collaborative self-process. 4:35:30 Writing processes are unique to each individual. 4:37:32 Adapting themes from books to films involves editorial judgment 4:41:08 The approach to writing theme in the film is explored through the experiences of the characters. 4:43:06 The theme of embracing life fully or withering away 4:46:52 The approach for the video is wrong. 4:48:49 Analyzing thematic writing with movie examples 4:52:49 Theme of Finding Nemo: Facing fears and letting go. 4:54:37 Pixar films explore multiple themes 4:58:19 Importance of showing the work in debates 5:00:06 Feuds between families lead to intergenerational problems. 5:03:49 Discussing the best superhero movie of all time. 5:05:53 Discussing the best superhero movies 5:09:57 Analyzing plot holes in The Dark Knight Rises 5:11:50 Analysis of themes in the film 5:15:30 Importance of clarity in writing themes 5:17:29 Games excel at world building compared to movies 5:21:05 Content creators wanting more money 5:22:49 Nebula is funding fun projects via NDA 5:26:33 Critique of a video about writing themes 5:28:39 Discussion on the disappointment of the video 5:32:44 Discussion about upcoming content and streams 5:34:40 Upcoming releases on schedule
Clark Kent in Snyderverse would be my Character Assassination 101. He feels burdened by his heroic duties. He's been fed awful lessons (look out for number one, maybe don't act selflessly) by his equally unrecognizable earth-parents. He's occasionally petty but extreme about it when it does come up. He does not at all come across like an average, affable person when he's not being Superman, he acts like he really is a space alien unaccustomed to socializing. He had not one ounce of wit or humor about him until enough fans complained that Snyder adopted some levity for JL, at which point his diehard fans of course said that was his vision all along.
The problem there is adaptation vs canon. Snyder Superman in MOS isnt an assassination of a prior stories Snyder Supes. Where Luke in TLJ or Fury in Secret Wars etc is destroying what the character was in the same canon. Supes is horrible adaptation but its a little different situation
Meh, an edgier/socially awkward Superman can work if its executed well. The problem is that MoS and its franchise is bad even if you dont know the source material.
The only truly wrong way to write a theme is to have one of your characters just state it outright. Themes are subtext. Putting it into the actual text means the writer was so bad and the theme was so weak they had to bash the audience over the head with it to know it was there.
That can be executed fine. It can be entirely justified if the core of the lesson is something another character is in-character trying to impart to another character whether successfully or unsuccessfully. If a theme is to let go of hatred, it doesn't 'fail' because the hero pleads with the villain or maybe another important character that they want to stop for them to say so.
it's not neccessarily that the theme was weak, but that the writer isn't skilled enough to convey it in a more organic way. even then, this format can be executed well.
i'd mostly disagree with that, actually, because it's contextual I mean, if the character turns to the camera and starts monologuing at the start of the film to make damn sure the audience gets it right from the gate, yeah that's lazy writing. But if that same character in a moment of high stress bluntly states the theme in a way that makes sense in the context of the movie (think Rutger Hauer at the end of Blade Runner, which is hella on the nose but still beautifully done because everything that happened up to that point point gives the scene proper weight).... yeah, that's a different animal all together.
Yeah, I see Tolkien as a man who was impacted by his time rather than someone who is an embodiment of their time (In the case of modern ""writers"" - a time of noncery.)
@@Coconut-219If anything, he was the opposite of his 'time'. Tolkien's era was rife with modernists who despised clacissists and romanticists. Quite a few of them, such as Joyce, Forster and Saramago in fact wrote better than Tolkien himself. But Tolkien essentially breathed new life into classical storytelling, and pioneered the genre of fantasy. He is the creator of the modern zeitgeist.
@@Count.SarumanI think Coconut meant that Tolkien was impacted by the major events, social upheaval, and ongoing industrialization of his time rather than the intellectual climate of academics that, as you pointed out, think no different than the deconstructionists of today. Deconstruction is boring. Tolkien probably knew that method only depresses audiences with nihilism and he did the exact opposite. The construction of heroes from ordinary farmers, that intended to inspire not defeat, his audience. I think the current obsession with deconstruction comes from bitterness many of these writers feel because they have never been inspired. And if they can't have inspiration then no one else deserves it either. A sick and selfish mentality that fits the living generations like a glove.
I don't understand why Fringy is so hung up on the "justifiable murder" thing. Murder is not inherently unjustifiable, "unjustifiable" is not baked into the definition. It's a legal term, not a moral one. All murder is inherently illegal, but not everytbing illegal is inherently immoral. You can "murder" someone, but if you're found guilty of manslaughter, it's not murder. Similarly, you can have a very good reason to kill someone but if it falls outside the legal definition of justified homicide in your region, it could be murder. Jessie murdering Gale in Breaking Bad is arguably justifiable. Bond shooting the guy selling state secrets in cold blood at the start of Casino Royale is arguably justifiable. That Aussie dad who blew away his daughter's molester was arguably justified.
It entirely depends on definitions, I’ve searched it up online and seen several different sources claiming that “unjustifiable” is baked into the definition. Not to say that you’re wrong, I think you’re just running with the strict legal definition rather than the colloquial perception of the word.
There’s a samurai movie called Harakiri that’s considered one of the best movies of all time. It’s a movie that critiques the hypocrisy of the samurai code and authoritarianism. The screenwriter said Something in an interview that was interesting. “Speaking of theme, those of us who make movies feel differently from those who watch them. Harakiri wasn’t labeled a critique of authority until after it was made. If you look at it as I did when writing it, the themes very concise. A samurai’s bitter ranting at his Harakiri ceremony - that’s it..” It seems the writer didn’t focus on a theme while writing; the themes emerged naturally post-completion. I think we can all learn a lot from this.
Im so sick of "media literacy". Not sure why but especially in the last couple of months it has become such an obnoxious buzzword. Every time someday talks about it I just dismiss whatever they are going to say. It's like look I called the people who like this thing media illiterate that means my opinion is the right one and their opiniong is wrong. (also sorry if this is not what the stream is about, im just a couple of min in but it feels like its going in that direction)
The last person who tried to flex his "media literacy" and film degree on me couldn't follow the fairly straightforward plot of Road to Perdition, but simple me with my STEM degree had no trouble at all. "Media literacy" has become a Dunning-Kruger (as played out as that is) litmus test, where the more confident they are in their ability, the less likely their interpretation will be of any use.
because it's used by people who don't actually know what it means, same with every other buzzword that loses its meaning through overuse and misuse (i.e. "woke"). media literacy refers to the ability to analyze a text and discern its meaning through your own intuition, not to have memorized the "accepted" "correct" interpretation of that text from third-party sources
What's Star Wars' central theme? I think if you look at the OT you'll find there isnt one and instead each film switches it up depending on what the story and characters are doing first and foremost. Story comes first. Themes emerge.
@@agitatedzone So to my original point, how does that fit with Empire, where friendships were largely the heroes' undoing (especially Luke and Han), because those attachments were used to manipulate and defeat them? Dark literally triumphs in that moment. ESB has a much more pointed themes around betrayal and sins of the father stuff. So as I say, I think the themes adjust depending on each film's content and contained story being told, and I think it's something of a disservice to dilute the OT's thematic accomplishments to "The power of friendship" because at that point we've pulled so far back looking for a unifying theme that the theme has almost lost all its substance. Just my take. You would be fair to say though, that if there was a unifying theme for the whole OT, your description is a good one.
The movies might be separate parts, but the central story still follows Luke's journey to become a Jedi, so there will be a unifying theme as a result. When you look at all the movies, they all share a common element that is the act of "letting go" which Luke struggles with but eventually manages to do which completes his arc. In ANH it is shown as a sign of faith when he no longer decides to completely rely on technology. In ESB, it is sacrifice, but he doesn't completely embrace this until ROTJ which inspires his father to do the very same thing. Lucas is kind of vocal about how giving things up is necessary to achieve meaning and growth, so much to the point he gave up Star Wars.
Craig Mazin says theme should be the central argument of a script, like "Men and women can't just be friends" from _When Harry Met Sally_ - not a vague concept like r e v e n g e. And structure comes from the characters' relationship with that argument
At least that's super useful for writing. Like Dark Knight, the theme isn't just "chaos do be chaotic" -- the theme is the Batman's order overreacting to Joker's nihilism and vice versa; but when both get pushed to their absolute extreme Batman comes to the realization that Joker doesn't; chaos or order, plan or no plan, all that actually matters is that people want to be better and do the right thing. That's not a lie or a construct, it's not something any one person can own as if they made it; that's just people.
It is delicious irony that the reasons for rejection outlined in the publisher response fits perfectly to this video essay where he explains how he took the publisher's criticism to heart.
*someone is making a point* Fringy: uuuuuhhh... You can wait your turn to speak like everyone else, I skip past the overlong tepid diatribes when you interrupt :)
So many people upset at rag’s and fringy in the comment section lmao. Why are you guys here if you hate one of the main hosts? He ain’t leaving anytime soon. Might not be the right thing for you.
I have a couple videos dealing with this. I can only speak from my experience as a screenwriter. But we usually pick a theme for the subtext. All the other themes will naturally unfold as you explore the story. But you select one specific theme to guide your characters and subtext. Once you have that, you lay it out as a moral argument for or against it. Then you assign your characters a stance on that moral argument and you let them duke it out in the story. The tricky part about this is that you have to be honest with yourself. You should be able to write from all stances surrounding the moral argument. Most writers fail at this, and hence how we end up with preachy dialogue or stories for example. If you have a good writer, you end up with something called Symphonic Dialogue. People gravitate towards stories that do this well like The Dark Knight for example. Here the theme is spelled out for us by Harvey Dent: "You either die a hero or you live long enough to become the villain." This is what's fueling the subtext and dialogue in the movie. I have examples for this for a bunch of movies in my Attack on Titan breakdown. My take is solely practical, not philosophical. Whatever gets you to that well written story, use it.
Yes, Shakespeare is the first person to ever write a romantic tragedy. Greece is just a conspiracy theory. Before Shakespeares time, every single love story had a happy ending with a wedding and a Dreamworks dance party.
3:19:14 The point of the Good Samaritan was to not let your biases against groups affect your perception of individuals. The people being told the story hated the Samaritans as an ethnic group so it would have seemed strange to them that one would be kind to one of them on the road. It's not really about "be nice". The secondary level is the very Christian idea that God will work through people from anywhere, which was quite a controversial notion to Jews at the time.
I still get into arguments with people about the meaning of the book Starship Troopers when the text of that novel is more overt with its meaning than anything I've ever read. You cannot say the meaning was not communicated adequately but somehow people keep drawing conclusions that are directly contradicted by the text.
That's also because of Paul Verhoeven's stupidity and his commentary with the movie. Lots of people have never read the book and rely on their equally wrong interpretation of the movie, which also doesn't express what Verhoeven wanted, to form an opinion about it.
RIP the fools. I decided to check out the book because it was still THE thing that created military scifi with mech suits and I had my doubts its anywhere the thing that made Verhoeven refuse finishing it. And yes, its quite a different beast from the movie. Admittedly it does drool a lot about how awesome being a space marine and using the tech is, but its not a "war is glorious and the only way to go" thing. In the book people dont have to serve to be able to vote, for example. Veroheven's ST works better when seen as another Verhoeven flick like RoboCop: over the top violence, cheesy but memorable characters and quotes, and some elements of WW2 Germany coded villainy. I always preferred Total Recall anyway, just a sweet and ambiguous story of a dude having a Matrix before the Matrix experience and possibly saving a marginalized rebel group from an air-controlling dictator.
@@DeepEye1994 In fact it says war is a thing that can be thrust upon you and you should be prepared for that to happen. Such as what happens in the story.
@@bad-people6510Yep, at any moment we could all be rounded up and sent to die in a place we have never been for reasons which have nothing to do with us. Then the governments will say it was to make the world safer for democracy. Such is the human condition for plebs.
That's not completely correct. Justifiable means "able to be shown to be right or reasonable; defensible". Murder is unjustifiable (in terms of the law) killing of another person. If you are found guilty of murder, you have not justified the killing of a person. Unjustifiable and illegal are the same thing when it comes to determining if a killing is considered murder (that and it being premeditated--otherwise it's manslaughter). Unlawful/illegal means not justified under the law. I think you are confusing having a "reason" why you killed someone and having a "justifiable reason" to kill someone. The difference is whether that reason is defensible or not. If it is defensible, then it's not murder (justified killing). If it isn't defensible, it's murder (unjustified killing). You have to look at murder under the lens of the law because that is how it is defined. Therefore, the use of justified has to be applied under the lens of the laws as well when determining the meaning when it comes to murder. If it is unjustified under the law, it is illegal. Murder is the illegal killing of a person. Murder is an unjustifiable killing of a person under the law. Therefore, justifiable murder is an oxymoron. I repeated myself a bit, but hopefully I got my point across.
@@oneofthedrunks8468 No because he didn't say justified he said Justifiable, justified is a statement of opinion where as if something is described as Justifiable then that means it may or may not be considered good/bad, it's referring to subjective morality and if the alternative definition makes the phrase oxymoronic then it's kinda bad faith for EFAP to go out of their way to interpret it that way as why would they be confused if it literally only has one way it can be interpreted. Also how would offing baby stalin not be justifiable murder as there are clearly many people who would call it justified but it also cannot be called anything other then murder.
@@shorpilakarshimanto224 But it's not justified under the law. People might consider it ethically justified, but murder is defined using the law so you have to look at the justification of the killing through the eyes of the law. If you kill someone out of revenge (say for the murder of a loved one--especially a brutal one), people might think it was ethically justified, but under the law you will still be charged for murder. Therefore, it's an unjustified killing under the law. The key here is 'what does the law say?'.
@@oneofthedrunks8468 I didn't think closer look is talking about justified under the law or not. Otherwise how would u argue if a law itself is justified or not. So the " justifiable murder " is a wording that makes sense. There are so many laws in the world that are unjustifiable. Someone calls it a justifiable offense then that still makes. If I totally misread ur argument then excuse this long reply btw
This guy got a book rejected and this video is like one giant coping session of him telling himself that the story, plot, characters, setting etc. aren’t the problem and instead it’s his “theme” that’s somehow to blame. Wow.
Themes in the Lord of the Rings: The power of friendship, standing up against evil no matter the odds, how good people can be tempted by evil, the struggle against evil has a cost, the responsibility of leadership. There might even be more than I've thought of, but those are the themes just off the top of my head. I wouldn't say the Lord of the Rings is particularly focused on a single theme, but it covers a lot and does it beautifully.
I think the most powerful one is “Even if good cannot defeat evil, evil will eventually destroy itself.” Both the ring and Saruman are destroyed the same way.
The Lord of the Rings is also multiple books about multiple characters. Each main character can be given a theme that they mostly stick to. Frodo is a good person worn down by the temptation of evil, with Sam and Gollum representing the two sides of that conflict, etc. LotR does not invalidate the video concept, only expands upon it, as you would expect of a massive story.
My choice for character assassination (probably one of the oldest) would be Tarzan, all on screen versions make him seem like a dumb brute or at least less intelligent than he is in the novels
Murder "The unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another." - Oxford Languages "The crime of intentionally killing a person." - Cambridge Dictionary "The crime of unlawfully and unjustifiably killing a person " - Merriam Webster "Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification or valid excuse committed with the necessary intention as defined by the law in a specific jurisdiction." - Wikipedia "The killing of another human being under conditions specifically covered in law." - Dictionary "Murder is the legally unjustified killing of one person by another." - Britannica
Can’t really agree with fringy on the themes. When I was a kid I wanted to be a writer and wrote stories and I had no idea what a theme was, you could probably extrapolate themes from it if you really wanted to pull a theme out of it but it doesn’t change the fact the story was written without theme in mind at all. I don’t think Michael bay thinks about themes when he makes his movies he just thinks about cool things or romantic things happening in a sequence that makes people have fun, I think that themes are completely absent in that creative process but it’s still a story.
Agreed. Tons of people don't 'start with theme' but just think of a character or scenario and write about that. The themes can come later if there's some commonality there. For example Dickens wrote stories with theme in mind, Arthur Conan Doyle had the idea for a character who is a brilliant detective that solves crimes; both are popular writers with great stories.
the process should more be, "make basic plot > discern a theme from that plot > use that theme to further develop said plot and add in specificities". making a plot that adheres to a theme from the get-go will result in something inorganic and "propaganda-esque", making a plot without any regard for theme results in the most basic and predictable narrative. the two should complement each other, not come in some hierarchical sequence
I witnessed an extra tall can of spray paint at a store today and the 1st thing that popped in my head was Long Can Bad.
That is such a misinterpretation of Can. Long Can means better value for money thus, Long Can Good!
But what if longcan charges more per long? Then longcan bad!
@@afkalmighty1557 Only if Long Can costs more than 2x Short Can but who would be so mad as to charge that? We need prices!
@@ViolentMessiah666 I sent a few pictures of long can to some one in the discord in the hopes we can discern whether or not long can is good or bad.
@@Steel_Wrath ok I'll wait til the experts report back, until then Schrödinger's Long Can is both good & bad 😂
Level 1: The video is long.
Level 2: The video is long and that is bad.
Level 3: The video is as long as it needs to be, and that is good.
Eh, it's long because livestreams are easy.
@@jerubaal101 No, making a good livestream is difficult XD
So they have to actually set it up, which does take some figuring out
Gotta find the guests to do this, and schedule to get everyone together for several hours
Then you also have to have a bunch of cumulative knowledge to be interesting while talking
Also as this series has clearly pointed out; It's apparently super difficult to be analytical of media while being able to accurately prove those statements
so you're just wrong man XD
@@critespranberry8872 Taking a poop is really difficult. You gotta decide what you want to eat so you can have a good poop. Then you need to clear your schedule, make sure none of your friends are coming by. You have to use a ruler to make sure the diameter of the toilet bowl is big enough. Find your poop knife just in case. Finally, you need to find your squatty potty and a joke book.
But seriously. The idea that an EFAP livestream takes as much time or nearly as much effort is a typical 1 hour Mauler video is farcial, Plus, livestreams get so much more revenue from superchats. I wish we got more Mauler videos, but I understand why does it. Besides, a lot of this content isn't really worth making a real video on. They indirectly address this when someone tries to say "they spent six hours talking about me!" And then they cut it up and it was only 45 minutes of actual discussion.
@@jerubaal101 I mean, have you seen some of the super cuts that mauler has made for efaps? Yes the actual act of making the EFAP itself like recording it is arguably easy, but that's not what EFAP is
Scat analogies make you look so smart, never stop using them, King.
/s
"is the power of cheese make you corruptible?"
that's a wallace and gromit plot right there
_After all_ Wallace said ominously _what's crackers without cheese?_
"Don't you see?! I've saved the world, Gromit!"
Gromit: (shakes head in horror before fleeing)
@@samwallaceart288 "You turned her against me!"
That Robot from the moon: "You have done that yourself!"
"Master Windu! Why don't you come on in? We were just about to have some cheese!"@@revolverswitch
@@revolverswitch You *churned* her against me?!
There fixed it 😆
As Sir Terry Pratchett said: "That's why there's rules, understand? So that you think before you break 'em"
When people start talking about THEMES don't forget to ask the important question. "But, How did it make you FEEL?"
And if you didn't like how it made you feel, just pretend that it was what you wanted.
Hollywood really has such a feeling of *VERSIMILITUDE!* I really am able to *BELEIVE* that I'm being ripped off by an industry of terrible untalented hacks that actively hate the audience and everything that the average person stands for.
feems
Bad, but then I pretended it was what I wanted and now it made me happy
It went from you’re watching movies wrong to you’re not watching the movie to now you’re writing the movies wrong
Tbf they are writing the movies wrong lol
There are ways to do those things but this essayist anin't gona talk about them
What’s next? Movies are wrong?
@@happynihilist2573He has made multiple videos on the writing mistakes in movies like starwars. So yes, this essayist will talk about them
I mean...they can all exist simultaneously
I'm the person Jon was talking about at 35:10 who sent him an email about "Not wanting themes" in my story lol. It wasn't that I explicitly didn't want a story, I just had a story idea without necessarily starting at or fleshing out a theme in the beginning.
I think what the guys were saying before was right, that you can write a story that eventually comes into a theme without necessarily articulating it. You can just think of a conflict of ideas you find interesting, or a situation in life people find themselves in and want to build a world and story around it and a "moral of the story" or theme just happens naturally.
Pretty much, though, just as long as everything else is coherent and makes sense. Then yeah, stories with little to no themes can be really engaging.
Though structuring a story around a single coherent theme can greatly increase its depth, I think it's very difficult to write a story well without themes and NOT have them form naturally. With the use of setups/payoffs, you're already establishing a theme with whatever actions are taken by a character. If I just write a super simple story about a man who takes revenge on someone, and dies, then the theme that arises inconsequentially is just revenge is a dangerous road. That said, naturally developed themes will NOT have the same storytelling impact as themes that are woven into the entire story as they'll be surface level and won't really go far beyond a couple characters.
It's ideal to try and do both. If you have a theme that's super simple and wide-scope, it's really easy to tie it into all the characters and their motivations. You can then also apply it to visual storytelling, and symbolism. Now you have plot, characters, and a sort of second story way back behind that which can be told utilizing basically anything. It gives so much more depth.
Better Call Saul is my go-to example, since its theme is pretty at odds with storytelling itself. It's a story about people who can't change, so the entire show is an exploration of all the avenues they try and take only to end up right back where they started.
Themes make good stories great, they just won't make bad stories good. A fuck-up with characters/plot is a lot more consequential.
stories that are structured to be thematically consistent are more satisfying than those structured to be narratively consistent. the latter creates a "predictable" story, where any reader satisfaction will primarily come from the feeling of "the thing i thought would happen, happened! i was right! i'm so smart!", which imo is incredibly boring. theme does more than give your story a "moral message" or whatever, it's a framework to tie the more abstract design decisions together in a rhythmic way. i'd say that if you write a story without even the broadest theme in mind, your decision-making process is going to product the most generic slop imaginable
@metalsludge8205 Sure, however the story still need it's narrative to be coherent otherwise the whole thing may break apart under it's own weight. TLJ had themes about 'failure' yet look at how that turned out. Granted execution was shit, but it had somewhat a consistent theme, terrible as it was. I say a healthy dose of both is the way to go.
Yeah I don't like writers starting with "I'm gonna write a story about XY and Z" but they never actually get around to telling the damn story.
The best themes are the ones that sneak up on you and retroactively make the whole story work. The story is one that's worth telling in and of itself, and comes together into a fine point of it's own accord.
Like, as the writer of you already know everything there is to know about the story, you already know what everything represents, you already know exactly what the audience is supposed to think about every scene; _why even bother writing it?_
5:16:16 "Say the line, Closer Look."
"You can watch it only on Nebula."
"Yaaay!!"
In my experience, Rags' assumption about how most (yes MOST) writers start writing their material without explicit themes in mind is more common than you'd think.
Most writers I know (and speaking for myself too) start with a concept or character theyd like to noodle a story around. They start with a very specific idea like "what if being Death was a job and it was someone's first day" or "what about a kidnap story and we do a duo POV between the kidnapped person and the person searching for them" and the story grows from there. Its that simple. And that might result in a short story, a full novel, or a massive series. It's far more organic than engineered, and starts small as something the writer finds they have the urge to write on a character or concept level rather than some over arching idea that they them construct entire worlds and plots around.
I find that once your central little spark for the story or concept has been developed, the unifying themes, internal morality, and messaging emerge later, especially once characters and world are better defined, and other people have had eyes on the story (editors, beta readers, other writers).
I find most writers who start with theme and decide "it's gonna be a story about this and THIS is the point and THIS is what I wanna say" often end up writing themselves into corners and writing characters who start acting in contradiction to themselves in service of the theme, and it ends up damaging the story because things dont progress to their natural conclusion and characters dont act how they should because THEME.
Midnight Mass is a massive offender on this front, where after a certain number of episodes, the story and characters go completely off the rails in service of THEME and imagery.
A fascinatingly refreshing efap on the writing process.
Yep this is how you're supposed to write a story. I've quite literally never once thought about what theme my story has. My original concept was what if we have a hero and a villain in the same body. Yes not exactly original as Hulk and Jackal and Hyde have long since existed but hardly such a thing as an original concept nowadays. I think it makes for some super fun inner monologues and story choices. Constantly having the villain whispering to the hero at his lowest, preying on his inner weaknesses. At times the story will force the hero to make a choice, give the villain control to possibly win and save the day or don't and live with the consequences.
Story I'm writing right now started as a dumb joke about a tech CEO having too many android wives who all start making demands and getting conflicting hobbies; and then the thought occurred to me: Shit. He _definitely_ made them bang people they didn't wanna bang; that's gonna be a huge problem for them if they decide to become normal people after he's gone. They're not gonna know how to trust anybody or have normal self esteem or life priorities. Like even after they're declared "legally human" they're still gonna need years of therapy and interventions because they grew up under cult conditions.
I don't need to write it because it's a story about "What it means to be human", I'm just really invested in homegirl getting her waffle-shop approved despite her trauma and ambiguous human rights.
A little off topic but is writing still a viable career now a days I would love to do something involved in that but I’m un sure on if that’s something that’s realist now a days or even how I would start getting into that field, just asking because you seem to speak like you have some experience.
@@maninthemask6275 Like anything, you have to start small. Beginning with the expectation/hope of making it somewhere generally leads to disappoint. It's a rough truth that a vanishingly small minority of people working towards success in any creative field gain enough of an audience to do it professionally. Keeping expectations realistic, and your work as a creative hobby and not the focus of your attention, is the key to not getting burnt out and keeping your spirits high if you don't end up getting anywhere.
That was a bit of a downer, so here's some pieces of advice that may help you get started. The best tip I've ever gotten in regards to refining your creative process, ESPECIALLY when you're just beginning, is to set a tiny goal and meet that standard every day. In regards to writing (I assume script or book writing), a good place to start is around 100 words a day, or maybe 5 minutes if you would prefer a time limit. If you're into it and are in the flow and don't want to stop, keep going past your goal and write until you feel satisfied. This might seem like too little effort to get anywhere quick, but the goal is to build a habit, not finish your project in record time. As long as you're making some amount of progress, you're winning. Some forward progression is INFINITELY better than none. Keep doing this until you feel that your goal is too small, then consider extending it, working it into your schedule more and more. Burnout is the death of any creative work, so avoid that at all costs by carefully limiting yourself. I've had to learn this lesson the hard way when I pushed myself to write 2000 words a day to meet a self-set deadline for a project on top of a 40-hr workweek, and completely killed my investment in continuing. Remember, keep it as a hobby.
It might also be prudent to start with an easy project. This can be helpful to both gain skill as a writer and gain an understanding of what finishing a project feels like, from start to finish. It's tempting to jump in with some crazy idea for a story that you feel would make a great finished product, but it's better to temper your steel in less dangerous waters. This is also something that I would change about how I started, as my first project ended up being an hour-long, fully scripted video that I wasn't at all prepared for.
You also mentioned whether or not it's realistic to get into the field to begin with. It can be frustrating putting your work out there without it gaining traction, but this is a great time to be attempting creative endeavors. In this age, the Internet is your best friend. There's next to no barrier between creatives and the public, and more importantly, the necessity of having a publisher has vanished as well. If you know where to put your work, how to market it, and what kinds of people might be interested in consuming it, the road to success becomes much more clear.
Unfortunately, writing on it's own is hard to market or present in a way that will generate traction. The Internet, especially the most popular places where creative works can gain a following such as TH-cam or Twitter, heavily favor content that is audio-visual as opposed to strictly visual. Even within the realm of strictly visual works, writing is stuck in the tough position of being composed of words. That sounds stupid, but something like a comic is far, far easier for the average Internet goer to consume that writing. The format of these sites favors it. If you're writing a script, then naturally there may be some accompanying visual to go along with it. It's easier said than done, but trying to find someone who will use your script for one of their projects could be helpful, although I would expect the chances of this happening are close to zero if you don't already know anyone (I wouldn't even know how to go about it).
If your writing a story, things are much easier. Getting a book published with a physical release is fairly easy as far as I can tell, considering you can find heaps upon heaps of absolute nonsense with blatant grammatical errors, factual inaccuracies, and terrible structure that have somehow made it onto Amazon with an official publisher. From there, you can hope and pray that it gets noticed by critics or other outlets and gains some fans, but that's a crapshoot. I'm not at all familiar with how works gain a critical reception in the first place, so maybe there's some writing competitions you could enter your work into and maybe get something out of, both in terms of writing practice and popularity. Definitely worth looking into.
Ultimately, making it in the world of creatives is hard, but there's hope. I myself am an aspiring art critic, so I'm with you that it can seem daunting to even begin. Hopefully the things I've said above are helpful, it's been interesting mulling over this in my head as I've been writing it.
@@superpomeranian7963 tl;dr
"Thank you for your submission. We regret that it does not meet our needs at this time." - Every rejection letter of all time, in total.
"Thank you for your submission and for thinking of our agency/publishing house as a potential home for your story. Unfortunately, we read your sample chapters, and in no uncertain terms, your writing ruined our day. We wish you the best of luck on your querying journey."
This sort of rejection just for me then?
@@captbuckyohare5585 You must be very talented...
I'm very proud of that rejection. Got that big boy framed.
@@captbuckyohare5585 Were you submitting stories to Tumblr? Because otherwise that letter never happened.
It was actually feedback from a beta reader who is also an editor for a small press. We're friends and he was half-joking half-being cruel to be kind. My sample chapters were ass.
"the theeemes! the filthy theeemes! we hates them, precious!"
Sam, media literate: The-mes.
Gollum, alt-right pipeliner:What is themers, precious?
Why are we talking about themes when EFAP 300 is coming out?
@@RanOutOfChannelNamesBecause, muh THEEEEEEEEEMES!!!
- My Precious, probably
Themes are the death of media.
Fri good being obsessed with them makes me hate them even more.
Come at me Scottish police, yes I hate things
THEMES!!! *starts breaking furniture* THEMES!!!! *out the window we go*
I think the point is like when teachers are like the curtains being blue means sorrow and sadness and then you email the author and he says bro idk I needed a color so I picked blue.
yeah, you can always over-interpret something and see deliberation were none was. We can never truly know the author's intention with anything, maybe a seemingly superficial element had a deeper meaning, maybe a perceived allusion to a specific concept was just coincidental.
It could be the author or the audience either huffing their own farts or being dilettantish.
Your personal take away from a story is very important, but you shouldn't disregard the authorial intention.
Batman is not an antihero. He works with the GCPD regularly. He's a superhero
Agreed!
People think Batman is the Punisher in a funny suit. He is not.
a billionaire with unresolved trauma spends his money and resources punching Betty criminals to fight crime instead of spending his resources to build infrastructure to fight rampant poverty, yeah batman is your hero up till to reach the ripe old age of 16 then you have to grow up
@@WhyNot-qw6vuhe does, they’re called the Thomas & Martha Wayne foundations.
@@ALCATRAZx29 Not enough rampant crime and corruption is a systemic problem that requires systemic change, i always found it funny how Batman sends criminals to Arkham Asylum for rehab or something yet fails to realize that that institution is so corrupt that the doctors are turning into active criminals, these things are way too mature for the avg teenage comic reader so let's just have him punch criminals it's way more interesting that way (although the new batman films are looking to engage with these themes so you never know)
Yay for more Little Platoon!
Here's the _actual_ biggest mistake every failed writer makes: Taking every piece of criticism as an immutable all-or-nothing. Whether that's ”well they don't get my intellect so fuck them” or "I got this feedback that's 100% what I need to do so I'll change my entire personality until I'm what they want".
When professionals talk about feedback, it's usually the attitude of "well that was only 30% correct, but it DID help me done in on the part that IS the issue and by tweaking something a scene earlier the next audience didn't have that issue". Criticism is super useful, but it doesn't need to be taken literally as only being the thing you thought it was when you first heard it. The person could mean something entirely different, or they could be wrong about the criticism but correct in identifying that SOMETHING is wrong there they just don't know what.
If it's formulated in the right way, criticism can be a great window to the audience's perception, something the writer cannot fully account for. "Ahh, this scene of x, y and z gave this impression but for them it lacked pieces such as a, b and c to make it feel more whole for them."
"know your audience" and "know your intent" are the two principles to bear in mind when filtering criticism. "is this criticism valid" is something not enough novice creatives ask themselves before choosing to accept it blindly (lack of confidence) or reject it outright (narcissism)
There's a piratesoftware short on it, but the TL;DR is this:
He had a case of someone complaining about a game segment. The criticism was wrong, but the game segment was still massively boring to play through. Thus, he reworked the segment of his game and everyone was better off.
@@Wyzai damnit, I was about to say that right now 😅
Absolute Valley content for the Unlisted gang.
Not that it makes a difference to me, since timezones.
Deep water and valley indeed
@@Arko777777 Wouldn't valley water be the opposite of peak fire? No need for the deep.
@@VrisketDeep Water reply
@@peanutgallery4 Don't make fun of me, your making me feel like sea-level air.
Stop cooking bro! You're so not there!
I rarely see people talking about the subtext of One Punch Man, probably because it's seen as a goofy parody, but it has one of my favorite themes, being the power of self-improvement.
Saitama is a character that broke his limits through hard work, buy it came at the cost of extreme boredom. Monsters represent a perverted form of self-improvement, in that they sacrifice their humanity for strength, and genos whole storyline is about trying to catch up to Saitama through upgrades.
Not only that, but Saitama has the ability to inspire the people around him to better themselves, not just Genos. And he often does it just by being himself. It's a very interesting dynamic that can only work with Saitama as the protagonist.
Mumen Rider's whole arc is unironically a life lesson for me. How while everyone else is chasing after clout and appearances, Saitama values the fuck out of Rider not because he's the best but because he shows up to do his part even though he'll most definitely die. Rider just really wants to do the right thing and doesn't worry about whether or not other people notice it; other people's opinions are their own job, he just focuses on what he can do and lets other people be other people.
It’s a parody of a genre whose most central theme tends to be self-improvement, if only secondary to sacrifice for the ones you love being more potent than lust for personal gain. So Saitama subverting it all by being insanely strong without seeming have earned it doesn’t facilitate me personally feeling like self improvement is all that important in that universe. To stay true to the genre it’s parodying, all the other characters of course need to stay hella motivated and inspired by Saitama… somehow.
Man, I don't know where you were looking, but I saw that show dissected and discussed several times
@@rick44451 Let us blame the algorithm.
I feel this is somewhat subverted by his less than insane workout regiment but I understand what your saying
MauLer must have hated limited time and space for school tasks and assignments.
I’d be curious if MauLer is the type to apply his work ethic to subjects he has no interest in or if he’s not as thorough and diligent.
Like just assuming he didn’t like geography or something, we he still have put as much effort into those assignments as subjects he did like?
"In under 200 words, please explain-"
MauLer: *retches*
@reginlief1 It's not a compulsion thing for him. He's not oversharing or blurting. He's just thorough. If he needed to write to 1000 words I doubt he'd have a problem doing so because he's fully aware that his own works contain a lot of chaff that he could cut. He doesn't cut down to the core though because he doesn't need to and short form works are by necessity less comprehensive.
@@lokenontherange yeah I’m more so just curious if he wished to excel at any assignment he tried his hand at or only for those he was passionate about.
It’s hard to tell because he’s clearly only put out content on topics he’s passionate about. I guess that’s why my question is more for my own musing than actually seeking an answer.
46:04
I'd have to say Nick Fury. I used to really respect that character. He'd come on to the screen and I'd go 'oh shit, Fury's here! This is about to get real!'
Now, he's a damaged old man. He has lost all of his mystique. He has nothing left to respect. Total character assassination, even going as far as to wipe his past to make him look worse. You folks are spot on with the assessment. That's why I love these longmen!
Agreed. What they did to Nick is inexcusable.
"It just writes itself"
"It just works"
How does it work, Todd? HOW?!?
using "Execution is Key" as a way to transition out of the Murder/Killing Tangent was hilarious.
Starship troopers and Barbie comes to mind. Both movies so incompetent at delivering the directors political satire they create a completely different story for the viewers.
Starship troopers is incompetent?
@@cyrus2395incredibly. After reading the book, it does not even speak the same language. It's a mockery of the book without knowing the book at all. And it still ended up making the Federation era seem like a better future than what is currently happening.
@@Gapeagle I didn't really mean "incompetent as an adaptation"
@@cyrus2395the movie isn't incompetent as a movie, but as a satirical depiction of facism.
yeah I think Vorhoven said he didnt read the book beforehand lol
*Julian Appears To Have Died.
Timestamps
0:00 EFAP Microphone Autism.
1:30 This Week's Theme & Rag's Poorly Phrased Question.
6:20 The 3 Tiers/Levels of Media Literacy.
15:00 The Definition and Execution of Theme (1)
37:30 The Rigidity of The Fundamentals of Writing: Plot, Worldbuilding, Characters and Theme.
41:00 Who's Your First Pick For Assassinated Character?
55:00 The Closer Look's "You're Writing Themes Wrong."
57:10 The Theme Is a Topic.
59:12 Henry's Contradictory Visuals (1).
1:02:31 Harold's Rejection.
1:10:18 Pause 2 & Not Enough Information.
1:12:40 Plot Twist, Execution of Theme (2) & Not Having a Theme.
1:16:50 A Lowercase "U" & You Got To Get Specific.
1:26:47 The Justice System vs Justice, The Theme of Randomness, Always broad & Destroying Your Own Point.
1:32:00 Theme Being a Topic Is Stupid & Specifics
1:37:50 Precision, Accuracy & The Dart Board.
1:51:28 Harold's Story & Multiple Themes Are Bad.
2:07:25 Theme Is a Question.
2:18:21 Justifiable Murder, Henry's "Bare Bones Structure" & Contradictory Visuals (2).
2:31:50 Intuition.
2:49:00 Constraints & a Debate.
2:58:40 Is Power Inherently Corrupting? & a "Clear" Story.
3:14:22 Child Vs Adult Storytelling.
3:30:30 Audiences Hate Purely Evil Characters & Some Themes Are Better Than Others.
3:34:00 The Correlation Between Theme and How Thought Provoking Your Story Is/ Kicking a Dog.
3:45:45 The Protagonist and Antagonist Must Disagree on Their Goals + Not Knowing What Writing Is Despite Being a Writer.
3:50:00 All Stories Need An Ideological Conflict.
4:15:09 Planning Vs Improvising a Story & a Character Learning a Lesson = Theme.
4:39:10 The Themes of Shawshank.
4:50:20 Rapid Fire Examples.
5:03:40 The Dark Knight Rises Is Good & Best Superhero Movie.
5:14:40 Nebula & Video Ends.
5:28:10 The Thumbnail Was Meaningless.
5:29:50 The Panel.
5:35:36 Bye!
I think the guy is focusing on his music fleems
I was going to say wtf happened to the Doemeister? Good effort sir!!
First Headmetwall, then Julian Doe, Now Patrick Bliss? Every time the torch falls, another Fapper picks it up and keeps lighting the way. Thank you for your contribution.
@@tuskinradar8688 I hope Julian comes back. I don’t like doing this.
You don't need a guilty person for an innocent person to be unjustly imprisoned. You can have situation wherein a person committed an act, and there's a dispute as to whether that constitutes a crime. Kyle Rittenhouse killed two people, he shot them. There was a rigorous attempt by a corrupt assistant DA to send him to prison for this. But he was innocent. The event was not a crime.
And here we have a great example of a false narrative.
@@eXpriest Oh do elaborate.
I whole heartedly disagree. Rittenhouse was acting in self defense, but it is not a corrupt action to attempt a murder charge in a case of self defense. Self defense is a purely affirmative defense, making an otherwise illegal action legal. We ought to test affirmative defenses in a court of law. Those attempts ought to be rigorous. Additionally, it’s a situation that I can point to now to show how deranged certain people were in attacking this guy without any understanding of the actual situation.
The court testing his defense and exonerating him was good actually.
@@joshuaneuhauser It was plainly self-defense from word go. So instead of letting this poor kid get on with his life the assistant DA dragged him into court and used time and resources he could have spent otherwise. (he admitted in court that he'd be prosecuting his own witnesses if he wasn't using them for witnesses in this case) Also Little Finger used a lot of dirty tactics in this thing, including trying to get the kid on a gun charge that I, as someone with no law degree, knew didn't apply after reading it ONCE. And he has a history of trying that with other people. So yeah he tries to get people he knows are innocent thrown in prison for political brownie points. Also when his theory of the case fell apart he changed his entire story and tried to get him on some other angle thereforto never brought up, based on nothing but a need to ruin a teenager's life. He wasn't looking for the truth, he was trying to get a kid put away. Fuck that guy and fuck that case.
13:00 One Punch Man is a great example of a parody that understands and is respectful of the tropes that it pokes at. Nearly every fight is a high-octane, over the top action anime between Genos (the typical shonen protagonist) and some villain, until he loses and Saitama (the shows main protagonist) begrudgingly defeats the enemy with a single punch.
He’s grown so powerful that no enemy can present a challenge for him, and being a hero (his life’s dream) has become boring and deflating as a result.
I think _The Room_ is a positive "Low Accuracy, High Precision"
Tommy was aiming to make a riveting sexual drama, but instead he accidentally created a comedy masterpiece.
Another example would be _The Guns of Navarone,_ which was intended by everyone involved to be a scathing anti-war film showcasing its unforgiving brutal nature and how it turns good Men against each other; but they accidentally made an inspirational pro-war film reminding you what the true cost of defeat is and how hard war will test you, and why anyone could fall victim to its threats and abuses which is exactly why you should fight back. The makers were confused and horrified when people enlisted in droves after watching their flick. The movie genuinely works as both interpretations.
And of course there's _Avatar: The Way of Water,_ which is accidentally a 1-to-1 representation of what happens to every deadbeat expat dad who thinks he can move to another continent and marry a local to run away from his problems back home. The burning bridges with every new neighbors you move to, the wife getting fed up with your bullshit, the constantly needing to lecture your kids about not embarrassing the family or upsetting the hosts; James Cameron has no idea how hard he called out every expat dad--he genuinely thinks Sully is the hero and his wife doesn't hate him.
The Room was created to launder money.
Dope and informative comment btw 🙏 totally agree with the avatar shit
Throw in Barbie and Starship Troopers.
I have never seen Daily Wire make a movie as conservative and traditional as the Barbie movie
@@thuglifebear5256how tf is Barbie conservative? Haven’t seen it but it seems to be incredibly overt in the message and themes it’s pushing
starship troopers as well, I guess? I hear the director didn't understand their material.
I was thinking of Barbie being a high precision, low accuracy movie. Greta made a great story about Ken, but I doubt she intended to. I remember walking out of The Kingsman 2 and wondering wtf it was trying to say, low on both counts.
The thing with many fables is that they contain multiple lessons, and the lesson depends on the audience.
The tortoise and the hare is "even if you are supremely talented, you will be overtaken if you laze about" when talking to a child who goes "but I'm the best anyway so why should I practice?"
It is "you can still succeed if you put in the work" when telling the story to a child who is worried about not being good enough to win, because not all talented people will develop their talents so they will plateau.
"Be the tortoise and the hare" seems silly to me as a lesson to draw from it. One cannot choose to be talented. One can only decide to practice and put in the work. Now we could go into what parts of what we call talent are actually the result of practice, and which bits are the result of born in properties, but that doesn't relate to the fable. The difference in talent between the tortoise and the hare is decidely biological.
Seems like the worst thing to happen to "Themes" is them becoming synonymous with Modern Art and how it intentionally lacks any creative meaning so that snobs can force meaning themselves. Especially if people look at it from the mindset of old Fables and the like where each could end with, "So the Moral of the story is..."
"Ah yes, I believe this media tells us of the human experience. Our capacity to undergo great adversity to become a better self," I say as I watch Blue's Clues.
The Theme of a piece of media can be extremely broad, where it can have multiple, be fairly complex or even relatively simple and common. Hell, you look at a lot of Japanese manga/anime and you'll see a lot of basic themes that is just the simple foundation of the setting and characters within.
Several of my favorite series from there can be said to have the same theme of, "Empathy is good." But the story and setting is wildly different for each one.
It's sort of like how the Hero's Journey is used as a basic outline for storytelling, or as a descriptor to help clue you in on what the story is going to be about. Just as saying that the story is a Mystery, RomCom etc.
if you think a theme is the same as some in-your-face "moral" then you have yet to break out of the mindset of Art as Propaganda. you don't have to pick up on the "theme" of a work to enjoy it, either. if other people derive a certain interpretation and find value in it, it's not some indictment against the work itself if you don't derive the same. IMO the whole "this work means this and you can't view it any other way" discourse is annoying, and devalues whatever work it's being directed at. basically what that smarmy Ethan fellow did a few episodes back
Every time they bring up Penguin I just imagine Oswald Copplepot ripping Closer's book to pieces page by page
I think he has problems when plotting, but in On Writing, Stephen King made, what i think, is a great statement about theme:
“Starting with the questions and thematic concerns is a recipe for bad fiction. Good fiction always begins with story and progresses to theme.”
This is what I was yelling the entire time. I write because I have a story to tell I don't care about themes lol
Stephen King is the epitome of "he's out of line, but he's right".
That book had very little in it about writing so it's good you were able to find that.
@@christopherkelley1664 it was certainly autobiographical in the front half, but I thought his central focus on the importance of writing first drafts “door closed”, the importance of correct grammar, the process of editing, and the overall importance of having a daily writing schedule and sticking to it were all perhaps obvious, but useful. His idea that you write your story first, get the draft finished and then after your first revision start looking for recurrent themes and supporting imagery and plot moments makes the most sense to me personally.
But, I think theme(s) can be in your mind at any point in the process, beginning, middle, or end and that this video telling anyone that to do anything different is wrong is just pretentious nonsense.
He also makes, what I believe is the very valid point that if you want to pursue the craft as a career you must read a lot and write a lot.
King fails quite a bit on his plotting and structure. But, especially in his golden era, he wrote great characters and could put you right in the situation with excellent detail. Beyond that, even if you hate his writing, his use of grammar and grammatical structure is very hard to attack.
@@Jaded.Hero.Worship Yeah, he has a great style and his characters are very real. He's middling on the rest. Doing coke in a trailer closet while blasting music does seem like excellent writing praxis all around so I do think that's good advice. Maybe I'm just mad he recommended EB White's Elements of Style, which is unremarkable and has some kind of middling advice as far as fiction writing goes. There were a few other things that kind of got under my skin in King's book too. Did he ever write anything else about writing? He wrote that a million years ago. I'd definitely say Maximum Overdrive was theme-heavy, lmao.
I don’t think LOTR was written with themes directly in mind. It was written to be a story first, with Tolkien’s personal morals sprinkled in. His morals and the “themes” in LOTR come from his religion and his personal experience in WWI. His incredibly positive outlook on the world (as opposed to G R R Martin’s negative outlook) unites thematic ideas in a coherent way.
Honeslty, the man never needed to inject themes into his stories if his stories were already a reflection of himself in the first place.
The anti-industrial themes are all over LotRs. I don't think industry is ever shown in a positive light.
@Edax_Royeaux I mean, I guess that depends on what you view as industry. We don't see smog-belching factories in Minas Tirith, but it would require a lot of industry to create and then continually support a city like that. I assume his issue with humanity's industriousness is when it comes explicitly at the cost of all the life around it, choking cities, and burning the countryside.
The hobbits are quite industrious, too. They may be a calm, placid culture, but they produce vast quantities of plant and animal products, just mostly for their own comfort and consumption. Not to mention the collective effort it must take in the earthworks and carpentry of creating a hobbit hole, they must have quite a system in place, I honestly want to see how they go about it.
Industry may not be shown in an explicitly positive light, but I'd argue it is shown in an implicitly positive light, where you can see it, but it's like when you're just going about your day, you don't think about all the things that went exactly as expected, it's the unexpected things that stick out. An imperfect metaphor, I guess, but rampant industrialization at the cost of everything around it is what Tolkien hated, not just industry in and of itself.
One thing about themes, is that they are often representation of the writer's worldview. The writer may not intend a specific theme, but their morals can be reflected in the writing and thus a theme is born.
@@thuglifebear5256isn't that the whole difference though? Writing a story around your themes or have them crop up and evolve organically vs injecting them.
39:32 “not to be pedantic…”
Who are you and what have you done with my Mauler
Rags is a way way bigger pedant than Mauler.
This is the first thing that pops up when you google "theme"
the subject of a talk, piece of writing, exhibition, etc.; a topic.
There's only ONE rule in writing. You can do anything if you're good enough to pull it off.
Them talking about the tortise and the hare makes me think of Cyanide and Happiness. Where the hare wins, but the tortoise watches the hare's entire family live and die until there are none left. Leaving him the ultimate winner.
Why does everyone forget about Han being assassinated in tfa? He goes on this great arch from a selfish smuggler to a fearless hero and leader, and they literally revert his arch to bring him back to where he was pre anh, divorced, and dead beat dad with son the next space hitler.
In my country in 7th grade in literature classes at school we learn that there are 3 fundamental things about any written piece of art.
1. Theme - is a broad topic that this piece is exploring and talking about.
2. Problem - is the question which is connected to the Theme that author of this piece is asking, a more narrow topic that author is exploring.
3. Idea - is a result of the narrow exploration, an answer to the question of the Problem.
Of course most of the novels, stories, script or any other piece of written work have at least a few Themes, Problems and Ideas.
And if you are paying attention in the classes this stuff just burns into your skull.
So it was interesting and odd at the same time to hear your and Closer Look’s takes about this topic and juggling of the words “theme” and “idea” (ngl your takes were 100% reasonable while CL’s were questionable at best)
Ugh. That one bit where he talked about how in film school he didn't like that he was asked to make a short film in 4 hours containing a specific prop bugs me because in schools like that you always have those guys who are like "But I don't wanna do that. It's too limiting."
Here's the thing. If you want to do whatever you want with your art, do that, but that isn't what those schools are teaching you. You're not going to be given a million dollars to make whatever movie you want to make immediately after graduation, you're going to have at least a few situations where you have to make a toothpaste commercial or something and need to make a short film featuring the specific brand of toothpaste.
That's the real purpose of those exercises, dummy, and if you don't realize that maybe you shouldn't be in that specific industry and should just do it as a hobby.
He didn't complain about it for being limitting, I'm pretty sure he doesn't have a problem with limitations, in fact, his show "Arby N' The Chief" that he's been doing for years is based on a pretty big limitation so there's that for starters. The difference here is that that's not a limitation, it's an imposition "you MUST use this prop". A limitation would be more like "here's all the props you have available to you, make the best of it, use whatever you want or don't, either way it's up to you but this is all you have". What Jon was talking about is very forceful and not conducive to exploration of ideas since you have to necessarily use something in the story for no other reason other than that it was dictated to you. It's hard to stay true to where a story needs to go if you're forced to use a prop, especially when that rule isn't even coming from a good reason or from something related to the story. That's the comparison Jon was making, forcing a theme off the bat where you don't even fully know what the story is and forcing it to stay because it's what was already decided is very forceful and non-sensical whereas the alternative is "oh, I'm finally getting an idea of where the story is going or what I want, how do I use what I have to tell that story? What do I prioritize so that in the worst case scenario the important stuff is still there?" Etc. Impositions get in the way of that. Not saying you can't make something good out of it but it doesn't seem the best approach to me
I've been through that frustration with game jams and the feeling never goes away, but not because the theme is limiting, but because it sounds stupid and getting it to a point where it is something you'd want to do would distort the meaning of it so much, it feels like cheating.
@@ProxyDoug Oh, that's cool! What game jams were you in? I joined 1 last year (godot wild jam). Meant to do more but got busy and then a friend proposed a game idea so I've been working on that.
I get it for jams, there needs to be a way of evaluating your games and if the theme is whatever, people will submit games they've been working on for a lot longer, but I do get what you're saying, it's one of the most worrying parts of it all for me, but even though it can suck sometimes, it can also be the nice kind of limitation, it really depends on what the theme is, you have to be a bit lucky with that
@@ITBahren I participated on Ludum Dare around 3 times, Samyam's game jam a while ago and a few smaller ones.
The flipside of having a theme to work around is that sometimes it just sucks working from zero, like, just do whatever, it's always good to be able to narrow it down.
@@ITBahren He literally said "I hated doing that, it was too limiting."
I think that for a story, 'theme' is like a key for a piece of music.
Even if you're not intending for there to be a specific key that you play in for a song, if it sounds good it's because you accidentally played in key. You see that with certain musicians who literally don't know what a key is and just play notes until they come up with something that matches with other things in a song.
I think that theme is the same way. Like, yeah, you could just have a character fight a dragon but that wouldn't be satisfying, so you have to introduce conflict, story beats, character traits, and eventually if the story becomes good you'll have themes, even if you never intended those themes to exist.
Character assassination? Buzz Lightyear in the fourth film
I need to know if his character was actually assassinated or if you're just mad that he was yet another victim of the "put a chick in it and make her lame and gay" trend.
@@FringeSpectre he was no longer a clever problem solver, having no idea what to do in any situation and clicking his buttons for voice lines to tell him what to do, believing it was a conscience. Buzz was never dumb, he was just unaware of how the world worked. The other aspect of his character they took was his bond with Woody, they promised to always stay together after Andy grew up, however in the 4th film Buzz repeatedly leaves Woody in extremely dangerous situations without applying any critical thinking. Such as when Woody wants to try again to get Forky after a failed attempt; Woody isn't willing to give up and his friends are chewing him out for getting them hurt, but when he goes to try again and Buzz has to make a choice, he starts asking his 'inner voice' for assistance because he doesn't know what to do, it tells him again and again to abort so he reluctantly leaves.
Buzz was naive and silly but he was smart, and incredibly strong willed, but in the 4th film both traits are gone for no reason
@@loicbosman4739bro it ain’t that deep ALL OF YALLLL make films be too deep
@@Whyyoulooking45 The choices characters make are insighted by their beliefs and goals, this is how movies work, and the fourth Toy Story changes a lot about Buzz without justifying it. If these aspects are 'too deep' or unimportant, than why should people even like characters in general?
This video efap covered was peak valley my fam.
4:27:24 Tarantino actually explained how the themes came about when writing Reservoir Dogs. It's kind of how Jon surmises; it just started as a fun bottle-story concept to play around in. But then Tarantino noticed in the much later drafts as it was nearing production time that throughout the story he kept gravitating to this sort of father-son dynamic between Keitel and Mr. Orange, and he realized that was the spark that held the rest of the movie together.
All the stuff with the big boss taking Keitel under his wing, the boss' son, the son's best friend Mr. Blond whom the big boss also sees as a son. It all clicked into place that that HAS to be the ending climax; Keitel pleading with his father-figure to spare his wounded son-figure.
All of that was there in the background subconsciously, but Quentin only realized how it all connected and how necessary every piece was right as he was in the final stages of the script.
And it's something he was wary of. "OK. So I got the father-son motif going on and that's cool, but _don't obsess over it too much,_ just let the story be the story and whatever feels like the right ending will present itself over time. The theme stuff, you can always let other people put it into words and study it, but when you're righting you need to stay IN the story and let the story do its thing."
I thought Fringy said at the start "A bum bum suit and tie" not "A button up suit and tie" 🤣🤣🤣
I made notes.
Vegans may view the power of tasty cheese as corrupting
A puppy dashing toward a cliff may be kicked sideways to save him
I think what CapO lost midway was possibly that both protagonist & antagonist could believe in "any means necessary" but have different ends (AKA wants)
Romeo & Juliet: can overabundance of hormones & undeveloped brains cause teenagers to do harmful and stupid things?
Many of the "Twilight Zone" episodes are modern to Aesop's fables.
One of the best shows of all time, idk how MauLer hasn't seen it yet
1:29:00 - The story dice Mauler mentioned exist: Story Cubes. There's also the Deck of Worlds by Story Engine with cards around the same concept.
My great grandmother who had a wooden prosthetic didnt die againts the G*RMANS for EFAP to not be live!
An EFAP with 3 guests that isn't live? How gay
EFAP 49?
Might have been 42.
Well, her wooden prosthetic eyebrows really lowered her combat effectiveness.
I remember my grandmother saying to me:
I don't care what they tell you in school, "EFAP" stands for "Everyone's Farts Are Prerecorded"
Damn the Germans ruined Grandma
3:55:20 In Whiplash, Andrew and Fletcher are extremely antagonistic towards each other to the point of severe emotional abuse and physical violence, but they both have the exact same goal.
I had a moment when I heard Mauler say he loves Sicario after fading into the background. Sicario is one of my all time favorites and have wondered for a long time what EFAP thought of it
The throwing of the dice comment Mauler made makes me think of the Dragonlance books. They were written like a DnD campaign, and the story would progress based on dice rolls. So it can be done.
That sounds cool as heck
Prerecordedman neutral
24:48 People argue over genre and the lines a lot trying to treat it like a science. But, I have often found it's better to treat it like marketing. Some genres are a bit more explicit in this but that's what they are useful for in my opinion.
Reminds me of Amazing World of Gumball, the Mom grows a tumor of self doubt and everytime she says something it would go
"...or ARE you?"
"...Or is it?"
The "turn your theme into a question" is such a film school thing to say. I remember multiple professors say this exact thing to help new writers conceptualize their ideas in a way to help them think about it more deeply. However, in my experience it does not help you to make a better story inherently. If anything it just raises more and more questions. If your theme is a statement, then you can laser focus in on that concept. "Heroes do good vs Are heroes good?" Are two vastly different ideas. The former starts with the premise that you've already decided that you want to tell a story in which a hero does good things, the latter is ambiguous, it's open ended. You don't discover the answer to your theme without doing much more digging into the meat of the concept. Neither approach is inherently better than the other. But my point is that simply turning the theme into a question absolutely does not make it 'tighter', if anything it makes it significantly more loose as it poses multiple infinite questions for you to answer: When does a hero do harm? Can heroism lead to villainy? What happens when a hero becomes corrupted? And so on. Whereas if you're starting with a statement as a theme you know from the very beginning what you want to say with your story and can spend the entire process exploring that specific idea rather than getting bogged down in new questions.
It's a matter of approach. A question is certainly more concrete than a generic concept like 'love' or 'revenge'. And going past that, you don't even have to start with a theme, you can develop a story, have an interesting conflict and characters, and develop a theme from the situation that arises. If you so wish, the tools used to build a house are not the house itself.
Murder is by definition unlawful but it can be justified. Law and morality are two very different things.
otherwise we wouldn't have courts. We'd just ask "did they break the law" and decide it based on that.
Taxing people is legal, but it is also immoral to steal.
I mean, Merriam-Webster's definition is "the crime of unlawfully and *unjustifiably* killing a person" so... Also, second sentence is a non-sequitor.
@@mrmcawesome9746 That's a strange definition... What does "unlawfully" have to with it if you already can justify it?
How is the second sentence a non-sequitor.
@@timewarpdrive77 Plenty of stuff is lawful but unjustifiable, I'm not disagreeing with the original comment for making that distinction, just the definition of the word part cause EFAP crew was clearly looking at one that did say 'unjustifiable'.
Everyone knows law and morality are different things, pointing it out is a non-sequitor in an argument about semantics.
A boat's a boat, but the mystery box it could be anything, it could even be a boat!
The duality of man
I think most people are putting the cart before the horse, themes should be emergent from your story, not dictating your story.
as with many things when it comes to art, it depends.
"I wanna tell a story about different people coming together to overcome a great challenge" would be an example of a theme being a good start for a story. It can work. Many of the negative examples we have seen, seem to me more like the approach of: "I want to tell a story about x (Halo, Barby, Star Wras, etc) but also include theme y. Again, it can work if you put in the effort... and maybe are talented enough, but it's a lot harder and not that sensible
I think you can do it either way. The question is which way does the author want to do it and how well is it executed.
An interesting story about writing would be Fight Club.
People talk about how smart that movie/book are, but that's mainly because everything is explicitly stated and explained in a really on-the-nose way.
The reason for that is because his first book got rejected, so instead of making it smarter and more well-written he said "I'm gonna make it dumber, and more ham-fisted."
i dont think dumbing down your satire/commentary so people will "get it" is the way to go, personally. cause even with how hamfisted Fight Club is, there are people that still take away the "wrong" thing from it. pandering to lowest common denominator is bad, actually. make the story you want, and if you put care and attention into it, it will resonate with the right people
@@metalsludge8205 Sure, but, the book and movie go so far as to literally have Tyler explain everything in a really condescending way.
That's kinda the deeper point, that the 'smartest' people are the easiest to manipulate because even if you're obviously crazy they're so desperate to not be 'normies' that they'll still follow you.
The movie even goes so far as to have the protagonist basically screaming that in people's faces only to have those people respond with "I understand. You want me to go further."
@@metalsludge8205 Also, the point is that his story that he wanted to write DIDN'T resonate with the right people. Like, what he got from the rejection was "Writing what I want? That's a damn lie. I'm gonna write what the idiots want," and it became massively successful.
Like, do you want to write what you want and hope that it magically attracts an audience eventually, or do you want people to actually read and enjoy your work, basically? You can't really have both, despite what people say.
A question Begs! A statement Challenges!
- Andrew Ryan
Tortoise [and] the hare I particularly enjoy because there's a lesson for everyone involved. The hare is not to rest on your laurels lest losing your goals. The tortoise may be an underdog but be relentless and you can win. Then the story almost turns to the listener and questions "you thought there wasn't a chance admit it. Maybe keep an open mind"
Tortoise "and" the Hare.
@satansclaw11 thank you tortoise in the hare sounds like a much different story
@@TheRoadwordier 🤣🤣🤣.
Rambo is another movie like Starship Troopers. Level 1. Kick ass 80’s Action movie. 2. Commentary on Vietnam. 3. Character study of a vet coming home from Vietnam and the struggles he goes through. Etc.
If you wanna dive into the themes of starship troopers Sargon has an excellent video on it
@@forsakenparadise6828 yes I’ve seen it Arch does too. I just stick to the arguments tearing down Douch-hovens sad attempt at turning a flourishing Libertarian society from the book into a fascist dictatorship using surface level bullshit of “LOOK! EAGLE! Dope ass Drip! BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE! SHOWER! MILITARISM! See FEE-ASH-ISMS!”
@@forsakenparadise6828 The only major issue with Carl's video is he skims over the problems that Heinlein's world would have because at the time he was quite convinced of that ideal. His more recent video comparing it to Helldivers is slightly more well considered because he know longer fully buys into Heinlein's liberal ideals.
@@lokenontherange Yeah fair enough critique but I feel the point of the video is that the society in Starship troopers is a liberal one not a fascist one like so many claim it is and Sargon exploring Heinlein’s ideas in the book and what we are presented with in the movie to prove this
I'm curious why didn't you have Drinker on for this discussion. As an accomplished writer, he would have been great for this topic.
I am so lost on Rags' leading brain teaser. Lions and tigers have different anatomy, it's not just the fur separating them. Tigers' bodies look baggier, lions are more toned. Tigers are kinda longer in the midsection, and walk lower, while lions have taller shoulderblades, and the chest is more defined from the belly.
Hmm okay.
Rags doesn't know what the hell he's talking about most of the time but says it with supreme confidence.
@@archstanton9073All he was trying to get at is that stripes are on the skin too. Is he wrong? No.
@@SiriusSphynx His interesting factoid was still coming from a place of ignorance, where he was confident enough that stripes were the only thing distinguishing big cats that he thought it'd be a great brain teaser to pose to his friends. It's not like some sin he's committed, it's just that the overflowing confidence is a trait of his that occasionally makes me go Hm.
If nothing else, this prologue paralleled the future discussion of "Is there one way to write theme into a story?" Well no there's actually many right answers for solving the same writing conundrum, but this one guy thinks he cracked the code and needs to tell everyone about it.
@@archstanton9073 except rags is correct most of the time
I really like this panel. Cap, Jon, Platoon all provide such great discussion.
00:03 Discussion about fictional character inside Discord
02:24 Tigers are good swimmers and have stripey skin as a key identification point.
06:39 Levels of engagement while watching a movie
08:38 Exploring levels of engagement in understanding themes
12:31 Understanding and breaking themes for narrative innovation
14:30 Importance of deliberate and intelligent writing for achieving amazing results
18:29 Ensure story supports the theme
20:13 Simpler themes executed flawlessly are worth more than complex themes that the story does not support.
23:47 Themes can be misunderstood due to their complexity.
25:22 Thematic message: Be on guard against temptation
28:48 Theming overrides character journeys in storytelling.
30:30 Consider the underlying theme when writing a story.
33:33 Themes can be intentional or discovered through the writing process.
35:12 Challenging conventional themes and narrative structures.
38:59 Understanding character perspectives and plot as subjective vs. objective
40:36 Character assassination in fiction
44:08 Discussing character assassination in storytelling
45:54 Nick Fury's character was systematically destroyed
49:20 Embrace your true self regardless of age
50:53 Exploring the theme of mandatory vs optional aspects of growing up
54:01 Luke's belief in redemption drives his character progression.
55:53 Writing themes should not be reduced to neat topics.
59:39 Discussion on the morality of certain actions
1:01:35 Debate on justifiable homicide and justice shortcomings
1:05:19 Discussion on the broadness and specificity of themes in storytelling.
1:07:08 A theme should be specific, not overly broad.
1:10:16 The importance of understanding an author's specific writing approach
1:12:11 Theme unifies the story and requires space and characters.
1:15:55 Importance of having a cohesive theme in writing
1:17:39 Be specific with themes for clarity.
1:21:15 Themes should be explicit but not overly specific
1:23:03 Writers have different inclinations towards ideas and characters
1:26:35 Theme specificity is a balancing act
1:28:35 Different story directions based on themes
1:32:19 Precision in execution is crucial for thematic coherence.
1:34:19 Specificity in themes doesn't guarantee success
1:37:49 Emphasis on execution of themes
1:39:46 Corruptive nature of power drives the story's themes
1:43:20 Balancing accuracy and precision in story themes
1:45:12 Movies fitting different examples
1:48:48 Discussing the interpretation of poorly written stories
1:50:32 Understanding the difference between accuracy and precision
1:54:21 Importance of exploring different perspectives and themes in storytelling
1:55:58 Writing advice lacks depth and usefulness
1:59:20 Exploring the theme of framing and revenge in storytelling
2:01:05 Critique of hyperfocused storytelling and execution
2:04:48 Analyzing story elements and themes
2:06:32 Writing themes as questions
2:10:28 Questioning complexity in writing themes
2:12:22 Consider presenting examples that challenge definitive statements.
2:15:48 Exploring themes through statements helps writers stay focused.
2:17:21 Identifying extremes in writing themes
2:20:58 Discussion on the theme of lungs and skeleton in storytelling
2:22:53 Misrepresentation of justice system in film
2:26:20 Discussion about the morality of killing an individual
2:27:59 Exploring the question of justice system failure in a courtroom setting.
2:31:33 Verdict doesn't bring peace to the guilty
2:33:28 Craft of storytelling is about execution, not just ideas
2:36:56 Theme exploration requires attention and focus.
2:38:53 Intuition works for plot, not for theme.
2:42:08 Believe in your story even if it goes against intuition
2:44:00 Challenges of human evolution in a complex world.
2:47:26 Exploring themes through questions or statements
2:49:24 Limitations breed creativity
2:52:55 Starting with limitations can boost creativity in writing.
2:54:51 Developing a powerful theme for writing
2:58:05 Artistic constraints help navigate infinite possibilities.
2:59:53 Exploring broad questions and subtopics
3:03:16 Exploring power dynamics and corruption through character journeys.
3:05:00 Exploring power corruption without protagonist's gain.
3:08:26 Video discusses the impact of phrasing as statements
3:10:11 Questioning vs. stating as a tool for exploration
3:13:57 Discussing the difference between writing themes for adults and children
3:15:43 Focus on complexity with adult themes in storytelling
3:19:21 Teaching broad principles in storytelling
3:20:52 The enduring value of ancient fables and tales
3:24:21 Themes of classic stories are often misunderstood.
3:25:57 Interpreting themes in stories based on different perspectives
3:29:31 Adult themes vs child themes in storytelling
3:31:24 Creating provoking themes by framing as a question
3:35:32 Analyzing themes through diverse perspectives
3:37:21 Theme exploration goes beyond simple concepts
3:41:01 Discussion on justifiably kicking a dog versus murdering someone
3:43:08 Discussion on the complexity of moral dilemmas
3:46:54 The tortoise and the hair both desire victory.
3:48:44 Can themes be written without extensive knowledge?
3:52:33 Quality of conflict is subjective and can be measured in different ways.
3:54:17 Characters need to want different things for conflict
3:57:42 Theme can be derived from characters' desires.
3:59:37 Key theme is the want for power
4:03:13 Beliefs and desires impact each other
4:05:15 Engage in conversations and seek new knowledge to change beliefs.
4:09:06 Characters' stances influence interactions and themes
4:10:47 Two people with different ideologies working together due to their compatible personalities
4:14:22 Theme formation in storytelling
4:16:09 Consider themes as an integral part of story writing process
4:19:43 Theme is inherent in character actions and lessons learned in a story.
4:21:42 Star Wars lacks explicit moral arguments
4:25:15 Questioning comfortable lies vs uncomfortable truths
4:27:03 Importance of themes in writing
4:30:45 Avoid winging it in writing, be systematic
4:32:22 Creating characters and themes through a collaborative self-process.
4:35:30 Writing processes are unique to each individual.
4:37:32 Adapting themes from books to films involves editorial judgment
4:41:08 The approach to writing theme in the film is explored through the experiences of the characters.
4:43:06 The theme of embracing life fully or withering away
4:46:52 The approach for the video is wrong.
4:48:49 Analyzing thematic writing with movie examples
4:52:49 Theme of Finding Nemo: Facing fears and letting go.
4:54:37 Pixar films explore multiple themes
4:58:19 Importance of showing the work in debates
5:00:06 Feuds between families lead to intergenerational problems.
5:03:49 Discussing the best superhero movie of all time.
5:05:53 Discussing the best superhero movies
5:09:57 Analyzing plot holes in The Dark Knight Rises
5:11:50 Analysis of themes in the film
5:15:30 Importance of clarity in writing themes
5:17:29 Games excel at world building compared to movies
5:21:05 Content creators wanting more money
5:22:49 Nebula is funding fun projects via NDA
5:26:33 Critique of a video about writing themes
5:28:39 Discussion on the disappointment of the video
5:32:44 Discussion about upcoming content and streams
5:34:40 Upcoming releases on schedule
Thanks
Clark Kent in Snyderverse would be my Character Assassination 101. He feels burdened by his heroic duties. He's been fed awful lessons (look out for number one, maybe don't act selflessly) by his equally unrecognizable earth-parents. He's occasionally petty but extreme about it when it does come up. He does not at all come across like an average, affable person when he's not being Superman, he acts like he really is a space alien unaccustomed to socializing. He had not one ounce of wit or humor about him until enough fans complained that Snyder adopted some levity for JL, at which point his diehard fans of course said that was his vision all along.
The problem there is adaptation vs canon. Snyder Superman in MOS isnt an assassination of a prior stories Snyder Supes. Where Luke in TLJ or Fury in Secret Wars etc is destroying what the character was in the same canon.
Supes is horrible adaptation but its a little different situation
Meh, an edgier/socially awkward Superman can work if its executed well. The problem is that MoS and its franchise is bad even if you dont know the source material.
What a fantastic conversation!!!
The Last Jedi and I don’t say this just to say it but it really is a key example of “character assassination”
😅
TLDR: I wrote a book and it didn't get published. I learned that everyone is wrong about writing.😡
This guy's video is fascinatingly ego driven.
The Valley be Cold today boys
The only truly wrong way to write a theme is to have one of your characters just state it outright.
Themes are subtext. Putting it into the actual text means the writer was so bad and the theme was so weak they had to bash the audience over the head with it to know it was there.
"I don't need a weapon. My friends are my power!" Does that count?
@@charlesruteal9062 if it's happening in a fight and their friends also don't have weapons it's going to be pretty irrelevant anyway lol
That can be executed fine. It can be entirely justified if the core of the lesson is something another character is in-character trying to impart to another character whether successfully or unsuccessfully. If a theme is to let go of hatred, it doesn't 'fail' because the hero pleads with the villain or maybe another important character that they want to stop for them to say so.
it's not neccessarily that the theme was weak, but that the writer isn't skilled enough to convey it in a more organic way. even then, this format can be executed well.
i'd mostly disagree with that, actually, because it's contextual
I mean, if the character turns to the camera and starts monologuing at the start of the film to make damn sure the audience gets it right from the gate, yeah that's lazy writing. But if that same character in a moment of high stress bluntly states the theme in a way that makes sense in the context of the movie (think Rutger Hauer at the end of Blade Runner, which is hella on the nose but still beautifully done because everything that happened up to that point point gives the scene proper weight).... yeah, that's a different animal all together.
Why did the Closer Look upload his videos to Nebula?
Because what better site is there for his CELESTIAL body of work!
10:30 This is absolutely not true when talking about Tolkien, he was interested in creating history rather than pushing any kind of message.
Yeah, I see Tolkien as a man who was impacted by his time rather than someone who is an embodiment of their time (In the case of modern ""writers"" - a time of noncery.)
@@Coconut-219If anything, he was the opposite of his 'time'. Tolkien's era was rife with modernists who despised clacissists and romanticists. Quite a few of them, such as Joyce, Forster and Saramago in fact wrote better than Tolkien himself. But Tolkien essentially breathed new life into classical storytelling, and pioneered the genre of fantasy. He is the creator of the modern zeitgeist.
@@Count.SarumanI think Coconut meant that Tolkien was impacted by the major events, social upheaval, and ongoing industrialization of his time rather than the intellectual climate of academics that, as you pointed out, think no different than the deconstructionists of today.
Deconstruction is boring. Tolkien probably knew that method only depresses audiences with nihilism and he did the exact opposite. The construction of heroes from ordinary farmers, that intended to inspire not defeat, his audience.
I think the current obsession with deconstruction comes from bitterness many of these writers feel because they have never been inspired. And if they can't have inspiration then no one else deserves it either. A sick and selfish mentality that fits the living generations like a glove.
I don't understand why Fringy is so hung up on the "justifiable murder" thing. Murder is not inherently unjustifiable, "unjustifiable" is not baked into the definition. It's a legal term, not a moral one. All murder is inherently illegal, but not everytbing illegal is inherently immoral.
You can "murder" someone, but if you're found guilty of manslaughter, it's not murder. Similarly, you can have a very good reason to kill someone but if it falls outside the legal definition of justified homicide in your region, it could be murder.
Jessie murdering Gale in Breaking Bad is arguably justifiable. Bond shooting the guy selling state secrets in cold blood at the start of Casino Royale is arguably justifiable. That Aussie dad who blew away his daughter's molester was arguably justified.
It entirely depends on definitions, I’ve searched it up online and seen several different sources claiming that “unjustifiable” is baked into the definition. Not to say that you’re wrong, I think you’re just running with the strict legal definition rather than the colloquial perception of the word.
@@H20Noit just means illegal unaliving
There’s a samurai movie called Harakiri that’s considered one of the best movies of all time. It’s a movie that critiques the hypocrisy of the samurai code and authoritarianism. The screenwriter said Something in an interview that was interesting. “Speaking of theme, those of us who make movies feel differently from those who watch them. Harakiri wasn’t labeled a critique of authority until after it was made. If you look at it as I did when writing it, the themes very concise. A samurai’s bitter ranting at his Harakiri ceremony - that’s it..” It seems the writer didn’t focus on a theme while writing; the themes emerged naturally post-completion. I think we can all learn a lot from this.
Im so sick of "media literacy". Not sure why but especially in the last couple of months it has become such an obnoxious buzzword. Every time someday talks about it I just dismiss whatever they are going to say. It's like look I called the people who like this thing media illiterate that means my opinion is the right one and their opiniong is wrong. (also sorry if this is not what the stream is about, im just a couple of min in but it feels like its going in that direction)
more like "Media Delusional" or "Media Schizophrenic"
The last person who tried to flex his "media literacy" and film degree on me couldn't follow the fairly straightforward plot of Road to Perdition, but simple me with my STEM degree had no trouble at all. "Media literacy" has become a Dunning-Kruger (as played out as that is) litmus test, where the more confident they are in their ability, the less likely their interpretation will be of any use.
because it's used by people who don't actually know what it means, same with every other buzzword that loses its meaning through overuse and misuse (i.e. "woke"). media literacy refers to the ability to analyze a text and discern its meaning through your own intuition, not to have memorized the "accepted" "correct" interpretation of that text from third-party sources
I think "media diet" is worse
What's Star Wars' central theme? I think if you look at the OT you'll find there isnt one and instead each film switches it up depending on what the story and characters are doing first and foremost.
Story comes first. Themes emerge.
The story is your mom, the theme is Lightning McQueen. The theme isn't "real", and yet there it is, emergent from the bushes with predatory intent
Exactly. This guy gets it.
_With some help from friends, light can triumph over dark_
@@agitatedzone So to my original point, how does that fit with Empire, where friendships were largely the heroes' undoing (especially Luke and Han), because those attachments were used to manipulate and defeat them? Dark literally triumphs in that moment. ESB has a much more pointed themes around betrayal and sins of the father stuff.
So as I say, I think the themes adjust depending on each film's content and contained story being told, and I think it's something of a disservice to dilute the OT's thematic accomplishments to "The power of friendship" because at that point we've pulled so far back looking for a unifying theme that the theme has almost lost all its substance.
Just my take. You would be fair to say though, that if there was a unifying theme for the whole OT, your description is a good one.
The movies might be separate parts, but the central story still follows Luke's journey to become a Jedi, so there will be a unifying theme as a result. When you look at all the movies, they all share a common element that is the act of "letting go" which Luke struggles with but eventually manages to do which completes his arc. In ANH it is shown as a sign of faith when he no longer decides to completely rely on technology. In ESB, it is sacrifice, but he doesn't completely embrace this until ROTJ which inspires his father to do the very same thing. Lucas is kind of vocal about how giving things up is necessary to achieve meaning and growth, so much to the point he gave up Star Wars.
“Water is like liquid elevator music.”
-Bilbo Baggins
Craig Mazin says theme should be the central argument of a script, like "Men and women can't just be friends" from _When Harry Met Sally_ - not a vague concept like r e v e n g e. And structure comes from the characters' relationship with that argument
At least that's super useful for writing. Like Dark Knight, the theme isn't just "chaos do be chaotic" -- the theme is the Batman's order overreacting to Joker's nihilism and vice versa; but when both get pushed to their absolute extreme Batman comes to the realization that Joker doesn't; chaos or order, plan or no plan, all that actually matters is that people want to be better and do the right thing. That's not a lie or a construct, it's not something any one person can own as if they made it; that's just people.
What does Me High Cheek Sent Me High say about themes? It reminds me of Karl Marx...
@@RanOutOfChannelNames you make no fucking sense
Funfact: german word for "topic" is "Thema".
- 2 social points for the use of the phrase "fun fact"
@@SiriusSphynx fair
Thema & Louise
Which seems to have come from their Latin opponents.
It is delicious irony that the reasons for rejection outlined in the publisher response fits perfectly to this video essay where he explains how he took the publisher's criticism to heart.
*someone is making a point*
Fringy: uuuuuhhh...
You can wait your turn to speak like everyone else, I skip past the overlong tepid diatribes when you interrupt :)
he’s incredibly annoying
So many people upset at rag’s and fringy in the comment section lmao. Why are you guys here if you hate one of the main hosts? He ain’t leaving anytime soon. Might not be the right thing for you.
No one is immune to criticism, that's kinda the point of the channel
I have a couple videos dealing with this. I can only speak from my experience as a screenwriter. But we usually pick a theme for the subtext. All the other themes will naturally unfold as you explore the story. But you select one specific theme to guide your characters and subtext. Once you have that, you lay it out as a moral argument for or against it. Then you assign your characters a stance on that moral argument and you let them duke it out in the story. The tricky part about this is that you have to be honest with yourself. You should be able to write from all stances surrounding the moral argument. Most writers fail at this, and hence how we end up with preachy dialogue or stories for example. If you have a good writer, you end up with something called Symphonic Dialogue. People gravitate towards stories that do this well like The Dark Knight for example. Here the theme is spelled out for us by Harvey Dent: "You either die a hero or you live long enough to become the villain." This is what's fueling the subtext and dialogue in the movie. I have examples for this for a bunch of movies in my Attack on Titan breakdown. My take is solely practical, not philosophical. Whatever gets you to that well written story, use it.
Prerecordedman bad
Hilarious, the *one time* he uses the word "killing" instead of "murder"....is when describing a murder and not a killing...
Yes, Shakespeare is the first person to ever write a romantic tragedy. Greece is just a conspiracy theory. Before Shakespeares time, every single love story had a happy ending with a wedding and a Dreamworks dance party.
3:19:14
The point of the Good Samaritan was to not let your biases against groups affect your perception of individuals. The people being told the story hated the Samaritans as an ethnic group so it would have seemed strange to them that one would be kind to one of them on the road. It's not really about "be nice". The secondary level is the very Christian idea that God will work through people from anywhere, which was quite a controversial notion to Jews at the time.
I still get into arguments with people about the meaning of the book Starship Troopers when the text of that novel is more overt with its meaning than anything I've ever read. You cannot say the meaning was not communicated adequately but somehow people keep drawing conclusions that are directly contradicted by the text.
That's also because of Paul Verhoeven's stupidity and his commentary with the movie. Lots of people have never read the book and rely on their equally wrong interpretation of the movie, which also doesn't express what Verhoeven wanted, to form an opinion about it.
RIP the fools.
I decided to check out the book because it was still THE thing that created military scifi with mech suits and I had my doubts its anywhere the thing that made Verhoeven refuse finishing it.
And yes, its quite a different beast from the movie. Admittedly it does drool a lot about how awesome being a space marine and using the tech is, but its not a "war is glorious and the only way to go" thing. In the book people dont have to serve to be able to vote, for example.
Veroheven's ST works better when seen as another Verhoeven flick like RoboCop: over the top violence, cheesy but memorable characters and quotes, and some elements of WW2 Germany coded villainy.
I always preferred Total Recall anyway, just a sweet and ambiguous story of a dude having a Matrix before the Matrix experience and possibly saving a marginalized rebel group from an air-controlling dictator.
@@DeepEye1994 In fact it says war is a thing that can be thrust upon you and you should be prepared for that to happen. Such as what happens in the story.
@@bad-people6510Yep, at any moment we could all be rounded up and sent to die in a place we have never been for reasons which have nothing to do with us. Then the governments will say it was to make the world safer for democracy. Such is the human condition for plebs.
Justifiable murder is not an oxymoron. Murder is ILLEGAL killing, not necessarily the same thing as UNETHICAL killing.
That's not completely correct. Justifiable means "able to be shown to be right or reasonable; defensible". Murder is unjustifiable (in terms of the law) killing of another person. If you are found guilty of murder, you have not justified the killing of a person. Unjustifiable and illegal are the same thing when it comes to determining if a killing is considered murder (that and it being premeditated--otherwise it's manslaughter). Unlawful/illegal means not justified under the law.
I think you are confusing having a "reason" why you killed someone and having a "justifiable reason" to kill someone. The difference is whether that reason is defensible or not. If it is defensible, then it's not murder (justified killing). If it isn't defensible, it's murder (unjustified killing).
You have to look at murder under the lens of the law because that is how it is defined. Therefore, the use of justified has to be applied under the lens of the laws as well when determining the meaning when it comes to murder. If it is unjustified under the law, it is illegal. Murder is the illegal killing of a person. Murder is an unjustifiable killing of a person under the law.
Therefore, justifiable murder is an oxymoron.
I repeated myself a bit, but hopefully I got my point across.
@@oneofthedrunks8468 No because he didn't say justified he said Justifiable, justified is a statement of opinion where as if something is described as Justifiable then that means it may or may not be considered good/bad, it's referring to subjective morality and if the alternative definition makes the phrase oxymoronic then it's kinda bad faith for EFAP to go out of their way to interpret it that way as why would they be confused if it literally only has one way it can be interpreted. Also how would offing baby stalin not be justifiable murder as there are clearly many people who would call it justified but it also cannot be called anything other then murder.
@@oneofthedrunks8468what about revenge kill ? Thats still illegal but won't ppl think it's justified to kill the murderer of a loved one?
@@shorpilakarshimanto224 But it's not justified under the law. People might consider it ethically justified, but murder is defined using the law so you have to look at the justification of the killing through the eyes of the law. If you kill someone out of revenge (say for the murder of a loved one--especially a brutal one), people might think it was ethically justified, but under the law you will still be charged for murder. Therefore, it's an unjustified killing under the law. The key here is 'what does the law say?'.
@@oneofthedrunks8468 I didn't think closer look is talking about justified under the law or not. Otherwise how would u argue if a law itself is justified or not. So the " justifiable murder " is a wording that makes sense. There are so many laws in the world that are unjustifiable. Someone calls it a justifiable offense then that still makes. If I totally misread ur argument then excuse this long reply btw
This guy got a book rejected and this video is like one giant coping session of him telling himself that the story, plot, characters, setting etc. aren’t the problem and instead it’s his “theme” that’s somehow to blame. Wow.
Homie literally gaslit himself into thinking the entire concept of themes is wrong tp cope with why his books got rejected
Themes in the Lord of the Rings: The power of friendship, standing up against evil no matter the odds, how good people can be tempted by evil, the struggle against evil has a cost, the responsibility of leadership. There might even be more than I've thought of, but those are the themes just off the top of my head. I wouldn't say the Lord of the Rings is particularly focused on a single theme, but it covers a lot and does it beautifully.
I think the most powerful one is “Even if good cannot defeat evil, evil will eventually destroy itself.” Both the ring and Saruman are destroyed the same way.
Another theme is industiralism vs rural idolicy and tradition.
Show and conceptualised by saruman forces.
The Lord of the Rings is also multiple books about multiple characters. Each main character can be given a theme that they mostly stick to. Frodo is a good person worn down by the temptation of evil, with Sam and Gollum representing the two sides of that conflict, etc. LotR does not invalidate the video concept, only expands upon it, as you would expect of a massive story.
-1:51:30
What kind of horrifying entity is Freudor Dostoyevsky?
(It's Fyodor - he seems to have mixed his name with Freud)
A guy who is always talking about how the tribulations of Czarist Russia gave him a boner.
Absolute valley glacier unlisted bros.
EPIC! CELESTIAL! THEMES!
My choice for character assassination (probably one of the oldest) would be Tarzan, all on screen versions make him seem like a dumb brute or at least less intelligent than he is in the novels
Murder
"The unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another." - Oxford Languages
"The crime of intentionally killing a person." - Cambridge Dictionary
"The crime of unlawfully and unjustifiably killing a person " - Merriam Webster
"Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification or valid excuse committed with the necessary intention as defined by the law in a specific jurisdiction." - Wikipedia
"The killing of another human being under conditions specifically covered in law." - Dictionary
"Murder is the legally unjustified killing of one person by another." - Britannica
Glad that someone pointed this out. People disagree on the definition of murder and that’s fine.
Watching EFAP is the only thing in life that gives me joy. Question mark?
Prerecordedman Chaotic Neutral
Can’t really agree with fringy on the themes. When I was a kid I wanted to be a writer and wrote stories and I had no idea what a theme was, you could probably extrapolate themes from it if you really wanted to pull a theme out of it but it doesn’t change the fact the story was written without theme in mind at all. I don’t think Michael bay thinks about themes when he makes his movies he just thinks about cool things or romantic things happening in a sequence that makes people have fun, I think that themes are completely absent in that creative process but it’s still a story.
Is "explosions" a theme?
Agreed. Tons of people don't 'start with theme' but just think of a character or scenario and write about that. The themes can come later if there's some commonality there. For example Dickens wrote stories with theme in mind, Arthur Conan Doyle had the idea for a character who is a brilliant detective that solves crimes; both are popular writers with great stories.
Same. It's more about scenarios that invoked the feelings I wanted, not about any specific message.
the process should more be, "make basic plot > discern a theme from that plot > use that theme to further develop said plot and add in specificities". making a plot that adheres to a theme from the get-go will result in something inorganic and "propaganda-esque", making a plot without any regard for theme results in the most basic and predictable narrative. the two should complement each other, not come in some hierarchical sequence
@@metalsludge8205very much agree