Trope Talk: Cosmic Alignments
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 30 พ.ค. 2024
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Speaking of, when will the Psyche and Eros, and Freyer and Freya pins ship? I still haven’t gotten either pair.
Could we possibly have the trope handbook with Red's awesome illustrations? I just love how most of them have a plot of its own xD
"Writing is an Ethics Violation" is one of the main draws of Re:Creators. If you haven't already, it's a good metafictional anime.
I hope you realize that your recommendation for Full Metal Alchemist was made almost entirely moot by you proceeding to include clips and major spoilers. In an overzealous attempt to share your love for the media, you may have accidentally damaged the experience for new viewers as well.
Hey, idea for a trope talk I would love to hear that was inspired by "Abigail" that vampire horror movie.
Child Vampires (or monsters more generally) usually little girls.
Abigail
Interview with a Vampire
The Little Vampire (though it sort of inverts it)
Blade 1 (she is teenager but fills the same sort of roll)
Nations of Darkness (a small mobile game) even has one, Alexia, as a legendary vampire hero and one of the guides if you pick the vampire faction.
Another "I want a reason to talk about Avatar" banger video
I was thinking the same thing. Sozin's comet arrived but also a full moon
I saw the title and knew it was coming.
@@midnightharvest3065 But also the Day of the Black Sun.
It's only because Leverage hasn't used the planets aligning as a plot point yet
Multiple times, no less. Sozin's Comet, the eclipse, the moon cycles, the planetary alignment in Korra, it's all here.
i love how ATLA fits so many of these trope talks
It's troperiffic!
Lightning in a bottle.
I think its the other way around. She makes Videos that can be related to Avatar.
I don't at this point the praise Avatar has gotten is getting really annoying to me.
Winter solstice, full moon, eclipse, sozins commet
I find it funny how Avatar basically makes use of every possible instance of this trope.
Winter Solstice early in Season 1 to foreshadow future events, lunar eclipse at the end of Season 1 when the good guys are weakest yet come out on top, the library part way through Season 2 telling about the coming solar eclipse, which then takes place part way through Season 3, when the baddies are weakest, yet come out on top, mirroring the events of the lunar eclipse but with the victors flipped, and then the prophesied comet at the climax of Season 3.
The ENTIRETY of The Last Airbender REVOLVES around cosmic alignments. No wonder it's one of Red's favorite shows.
ATLA uses basically every trope amazingly, but they do love their cosmic alignments
Don't forget about full moons giving waterbenders a buff!
The summer solstice is also alluded to, in the Suko and Aang episode where they find an old temple that only opens during the solstice. Cheers to Suko for using his rogue skills and "lock picking" that door.
The end of season one is not a cosmic alignment, as the moon going red is triggered by the moon spirit (the fish) being (almost) killed. Everything else is, though.
I mean its crazy theyre having a solar eclipse a lunar eclipse and a comet sighting in the same year. In the right spots
I love that Owl House and Fullmetal Alchemist use the eclipse for their circle-based magic systems. Throughout the whole show you see different circle sizes be used for different power levels of spells, and then the reason the bad guy needs the eclipse is because they’re using the *actual shadow of the moon* to trigger their big-ass world ending spell.
Actually in Fullmetal Alchemist the bad guy is using an immense circular tunnel, it's the good guys first counter spell that uses the shadow of the moon.
@@artcase8936 IIRC, both the bad guys circle and the counter circle require the moon's shadow to activate. The counter circle specifically requires the death circle to be activated to function.
@@BooksOfValdemar Rereading that scene, chapter 104, the villain needed the eclipse because in alchemy the sun and moon together represent god. Which is what he wants to be.
When Hohenheim reveals what he's been doing the villain points out the need for a circle and is surprised and enraged to learn that Hohenheim is using the shadow of the moon.
The first counter circle doesn't require the death one to go, it's just only needed if it does. It's the second counter circle that hijacks the death array.
@@artcase8936 Oh, thanks. Its been a while since I've reread FMA, I didn't fully remember how the nation-circles worked.
Bonus points for FMA:B that it also has some major cosmic horror vibes. There is something *Cosmic* going on. sm
"...it takes an *EXTREMELY* high powered character to alter the course of the heavens themselves."
Sun Wukong: "What, what is it, whaddayou want?"
petitioner: "Oh. Never mind. Kal-El just took care of it already."
Starscourge Radahn has entered the chat.
The Collector: Boop!
I immediately thought of Starscourge Radahn from Elden Ring
When you said Sun Wukong, I automatically read it the way Red voices him in the Journey To The West Summarized series
Convinced Red is working backwards from “how many videos can I make out of binging ATLA”, and honestly we love that
Definitely
Hear hear!
That and FMA
She and Tim from Hello Future Me are going to be locked in an intense competition for that one.
Also, from her videos about eclipses plus the recent eclipse last month, I'm guessing she had it on the brain (like so many of us) and worked backwards from there.
The whole "writers by nature are mean to their characters" thing reminded me of one of the Magnus Archives Q and As where they're asked who would win in a fight, the director or the character he voices, and the answer is "the character is too gentle to actually fight me, unless he learns that I'm the one making him suffer in which case I'm screwed"
Lol. I've thought about that and how my main character would react to knowing that he's in a story. He's already in trouble in the story for picking a fight with the god of the world and refusing to act as a servant rather than an ally. I'd be a dead man walking, unless we had a long conversation where I convince him that I had no idea or malice in writing the story.
The Riddick Movie "Pitch Black" is a great example of Sci-Fi using this trope!! The Super Dangerous alien wildlife only come out at night, and the habitable moon our party is on is about to go into the shadow of it's parent gas giant, allowing the monsters to come out and hunt for food for much longer.
In that case, being the basis for the main plot rather than the climax of it.
More specifically, all three of the system's suns are about to be eclipsed from their perspective, giving the world a rare night.
I think the wildlife is active, but as they have vampire syndrome (sustained light literally melts their bodies), they stay in caves and underground areas.
The Chronicles of Riddick (second movie) does a brief trick with this on Cremetoria, a subterranean prison planet so close to its sun that it disintegrates anyone on the surface most of the time. So the protagonists need to literally outrun the sunrise during their escape plan.
And Riddick (the third movie) might arguably pull a hattrick if weather counts, as in that movie the time line the protagonists are running against turns out to be rain, as the dangerous wildlife on that planet goes into torpor until it gets wet.
@@josephperez2004 I've seen the first of those movies all the way through once, and then pieces of the other two.
And since I've seen plenty of weather channels that are actually predicting changes in the weather (admittedly with diminishing accuracy the farther into the future you get), I would say weather does count; just, perhaps, as a softer deadline than celestial bodies aligning.
This was the first thing I thought of when hearing cosmic alignments. That movie is ridiculous and I absolutely love it.
Ah yes, cosmic alignment; when Sephiroth needs to be extra dramatic before dealing a comically small amount of damage
94% of your current HP* isn't comically small, except in contrast to the celestial bodies which lost 250% of their current HP during the preceding cutscene.
*Except in the Japanese release, where it consistently deals ~2,000 damage.
@@timothymclean Funny enough the overflow HP glitch was solved and Sephiroth's NA Supernova can do the Lucky Seven damage to the opponent, effectively wiping out the party. So yes, Seph can kill with supernova in both versions, NA is unfortunately part of a glitch that VERY unfortunate people can actually land on.
@@timothymcleanit will be fascinating how they translate this into a final battle(s) in Part 3.
Estuans interius, Ira vehementi
@mra4521 I would see it being a One Shot Attack, or maybe massive damage to balance but could go either way, that Sephiroth has to charge, and if you don't stagger him in time, he uses it.
I'll never forget the moment in the Owl House S2 finale when the Collector stopped the eclipse by dragging the moon away like the sky was their freaking Ipad. "$hit! this kid's playing on creative!"
It's the pause for effect at that power level. So good I haven't seen it and I know it happened.
When having to deal with reality becomes more about not breaking it before it has chance to blink and look impressed at least.
It was the music change and the looks on everyone's faces that did it for me. The Collector's Theme was so tonally jarring coming right after the previous scene, and everyone frozen in shock really sold that NOTHING about the Collector was expected. The Boiling Isles is weird, but even the witches who were born and raised there had no idea how to react!
I did think it was very funny that Red showed the Collector right before talking about how the villains have no power over the movement of celestial bodies.
Tidal waves have destroyed seventeen cities...
Worfing the laws of physics.
ATLA and FMA:B are so hard to talk about without spoiling because they’re both such masterful examples of interconnected story threads and planning ahead
Red: "The big bad's ultimate plan can't be stopped before the climax."
Every LARPer and D&D player: "Challenge accepted."
Which just furtherly proves that all complicated big plans only work in fiction
Well sure, RPGs work by different rules
TTRPGs are the only places where someone can set up an intricate plot with an epic payoff and have it all ruined in one minute
I have several suggestions for trope talks.
- one man army: a self-explanatory name.
- Castle Rock syndrome: when the obvious solution to a problem is to just leave. Named for the town commonly seen in many of Stephen King’s novels. Common trope in haunted house stories.
- superheroes with no powers: Hawkeye, Batman, Punisher, etc.
The superheroes one is kinda weird because at that point the listed heros (maybe not hawkeye I dont now that charakter that well) have done stuff or survived stuff that can only be explained with superpowers.
@@mistereiswolf70 I understand that, but at their best, these characters are relatively grounded.
@@mistereiswolf70 With some heroes, mainly those focused on technology, their ability to survive things despite being normal humans can be explained away using some of the gimmicks that the heroes' technology uses.
I think the superhero trope you’re looking for is called “badass normal” iirc
Ah, Castle Rock Syndrome, or, as Red put it in the Lovecraft video: " *JUST MOVE AWAY!!* "
2:56 The plot of "The Martian" features an cosmic alignment if you classify a transfer window as a cosmic alignmnet.
You know what, I think I will.
I think it counts, in real life in order to get things to Mars they tend to wait until Mars's orbit is closest to us, even if it's not a perfect alignment every time, Earth and Mars's orbits will line up with each other during that window of time.
@@suraivase7285 In 100 years, every time we get a good launch window Earth and whatever Mars colony exists are just going to SPAM rockets at each other.
"We launch now, or we lose the deposit! GO GO GO"
I don't know, the transfer from Mars to Earth isn't an inevitability, but a character's choice, right?
The funny thing is, is it both is and isn't, because the planets aren't aligned for a transfer window, and more just in the right motion where moving from one to the other is at it's easiest, which relies on the same math about inevitable motion.
Which puts it very much in the same wheelhouse, even if the aesthetics are not present.
Cosmic alignment is ironically only half as difficult as “BUT THE PROM IS TOMORROW!”
Explaining characters as beings separate from the author is the sort of thing that has me thinking I have 6 worlds simultaneously cursing and cheering that I've yet to put rigid form to their tales.
Red having an app on her phone telling her when a Venus is getting close to her asteroid is the kind of happy ending one usually has to pay extra for.
I have a similar app, SkyGuide, that is always able to answer the @okay, which is that one" question.
She’s slowly turning into what she hated most. 🪐
And I’m here for it.
@@Alusnovalotus An astronomy enthusiast?
@@maxwellsimon4538no, Venus
Shoutout to General Radahn for having the guts to stop the stars and the might to actually pull it off
Our man is literally just built different.
Only question is, what did he do it for?!
To flex on this trope
@arianewinter4266 we might get the answer sometime at the end of June, but right now I’m assuming he did it to prevent any more astels or falling star beasts from showing up.
Because he knew something bad was going to happen otherwise. It is not clear if it it would have been the destruction of Sellia, the invasion of star-related creatures like Astel... or Ranni completing her plan.
Scific cosmic allignments are typically "we're waiting for the optimal launch date to pull off an orbital slingshot and cut down our travel time by 99.3%" or "the enemy is waiting for a perfect window to launch an invasion fleet using an oribital slingshot we've calculated happened x years ago but will be visible to us in y years which will heralf their arrival shortly thereafter."
Your point at the beginning about knowing where the story is going long term is a fantastic one, because people really do not comprehend how common it is for storytellers to have A Cool Concept, That One Mindblowing Twist, and then a general vague "stuff goes here" for the in-between and final resolution. Stories start from a single idea and take a lot of work to flesh out, and often it's in the process of telling the story that you figure out the endgame- which is fine if you're writing a first draft that you plan to revise, less so if you're writing a work that is being published as it goes along. It's not IMPOSSIBLE to make as-we-go-along revisions look intentional, but it certainly isn't easy, and if you aren't careful you write yourself into a corner.
Yeah, exactly.
I often have no idea about the ending and my stories frequently fall apart. _* cries *_
It’s okay for a first draft.
Aww Cosmic Alignments… Like when the alignment of the moon, stars, and planets was just so that it led to the rebirth of the Chaos Deity now known as Red. 😁❤️💙
Edit: So glad Red found a trope so she could talk about eclipses again. 🌑☀️
And ATLA! Don’t forget ATLA.
Even Mystery Incorporated had one as part of the big final mystery
Ah yes nibiru
that one was particularly creepy
Mystery incorporated my beloved, easily the best thing the franchise has ever done
@@alexandruulesan7009 Nothing like seeing a dog in a coma that flat lines, suddenly snaps out of it, say something vague and then goes back into the coma.
Fun sidenote about Castlevania: They call out well ahead of time that it can't possibly be a solar eclipse, because the day it was scheduled to happen was "the night of the full moon". By definition, a full moon can't result in a solar eclipse; only a new moon can do that.
I like that "The Dark Crystal" was included as example clips. Its take on Cosmic Alignment was a great way of making it good or bad for both sides because both sides needed it- if good prevailed, the villains would lose their dominion and the land restored; if evil prevailed, they'd make sure no one could stand up to them again and they'd keep their dominion and pseudo-immortality. The lore makes it more poetic of an event from how this Alignment had happened twice before and each time was a historic turning point on how the villains impacted the land, and the third Alignment bringing everything full circle.
"Go on then, ask what the Great Conjunction is. What's the Great Conjunction?"
"Uh, what's the Great Conjunction?"
"The Great Conjunction is the end of the world!... Or the beginning, heh. End, begin, all the same. Big change. Sometimes good; sometimes bad."
One of the joys of writing while knowing the ending is putting in touches of foreshadowing while chuckling, "Yes... good," under the darkness of a total solar eclipse.
In my case it's Walpurgisnacht, though the whole plot is basically preparations for the event. The closest things to big bads are people uninterested in the event(as one is a serial killer, the other is a rival character who never joins the team)
No kidding.
In my planned King Arthur books, a lunar eclipse marks the eve of the final battle between Arthur and Mordred (who are each incidentally marked with some serious mystical importance as forces of "light" and "dark").
Some creepy stuff happens that night.
The Power of Five had an interesting version of this, where the Old Ones were imprisoned in the Nazca lines and would only be freed when the stars aligned perfectly with them, the catch being that this would never happen, that in tens to hundreds of thousands of years there never would be a case where all of the stars needed would align.
So a rich guy who wants to free the Old Ones instead waits for a case where all but one of the necessary would align, and have one his satellites in place for the last star instead. And it works, the satellite in place of the star was good enough to free the Old Ones.
That's honestly really hilarious. Its like imagining Jeff Bezos in a cyberpunk story where throughout the entire run of the series we have him slowly taking over access to Elon Musk's Satellite network, only to reveal in the final arc that he plans on using said satellites to align in the right way to raise R'lhey and awaken Cthulhu.
Holy shit I've never met anyone else who read that. That was the most insane plot twist I had ever read at that age
Yeah, that was a cool moment.
Power of five mention! Loved those books as a kid
yeah i remember reading most of them in high school (and at this point have gotten them all in hardback)
Red: "Cosmic alignments are very rarely used in Sci-Fi"
Pitch Black: "Am I a joke to you?"
TBF, she said “rarely used” instead of “never.”
@@animeotaku307 Yeah, but when there is such a strong counter augment that instinctly pops in people's minds you need to acknowledge that. For most people if one example pops in their mind that quickly, they would think there is probably a lot more they haven't thought yet. But if Red added "name one that isn't Pitch Black or 3 Body Problem", that would get people thinking and realize Red is right in that it is rare.
In terms of narratively significant cosmic alignments in sci-fi: my favourite example is in Isaac Asimov’s short story Nightfall. It’s actually an example of dramatic irony cosmic horror, like Red mentioned in the small mammal on a big adventure trope talk!
It takes place on a planet that has 6 suns, starting right before nightfall on the planet. Since there are 6 suns, nightfall only occurs every 1000 years, making it a very rare cosmic event that everyone is super excited for. It has some really delicious dramatic irony, since the characters in the book are theorizing about and anticipating something that happens to us every 24 hours, and there’s a bunch of foreshadowing that tells the the reader exactly what will happen at the end but is completely missed by the characters since they have no context for nighttime. I also find it really neat to think about in the context of cosmic alignments, because the Sun being aligned with the Earth technically counts but it’s so mundane that people don’t usually consider it to be one.
I highly recommend it. It’s a short story so it doesn’t take long to read, and you can find free copies of it online (though I’m unsure of how legal they are lol). The ending is equal parts tragic and chilling, and the story overall stuck with me for a long time. It’s hard to stop thinking about once I start!
And it was made into a movie. Which was terrible. Every so often, you can see seeds of brilliance, but the movie makers then completely neglect to let those seeds grow to fruition. Curiosity as to how movie makers can drop the ball so badly is really the only reason to watch the movie.
I was going to bring up Nightfall as well when Red mentioned there weren't many sci-fi versions of the trope.
@michaelwoodhams7866 I just looked it up to see what you were talking about and it seems that wikipedia lists two different movie adaptations of Nightfall, which both lead to very short pages. I‘m curious which one you meant, and what those hints of brilliance were.
But yeah, I think short stories tend to be a lot harder to translate into movies. There just isn’t typically enough content in a short story to fill even a 90 minute runtime, so a lot has to be added and it’s usually enough to significantly change the narrative. Even when it really works (like in Walter Mitty), you end up with a product that doesn’t really match the original thing being adapted, to the point of destroying the original message/themes/atmosphere/whatever made it cool in the first place. I genuinely can’t imagine how one could even extend Nightfall. There’s nothing to add!
Studios should really make short films to adapt short stories. I’m pretty sure in the current streaming market they could do fairly well. It seems less risky to me, but I’m not in the movie industry so what do I know.
Of course, I don’t actually know exactly how the movie was bad so maybe this whole comment was a wholly unrelated rant! So I apologize if that’s the case, I just feel very strongly about poor adaptations of short stories and I feel like that’s how they tend to fail.
@@GayBowser-lq7pq It was about 30 years ago that I saw it, so I fear I don't remember what the hints of brilliance were, and I didn't know prior to your post that there were two adaptations. If one is 1990s or later, it wasn't that one.
I also saw a really bad 1950s Day of the Triffids movie. It put me off reading the book for years. When I eventually did, I found that all the Really Bad Stuff was only in the movie (especially the deus ex machina ending.)
One of my favorite ways that Solar Eclipses specifically can be used for this trope is when one thing can only happen in the daytime and another can only happen at night, but they both happen during the Eclipse. One example is in Ladyhawk, where a pair of lovers are cursed so that during the day he is a man and she is a hawk, but at night she is a woman while he is a wolf. During a Solar Eclipse they can both take on their human forms and it gives them the chance to confront the evil sorcerer and break the curse.
Such an underrated movie! It really deserves to be better known. It was a "realistic" fantasy decades before those would become popular.
It's a good thing their curses weren't the other way around, then.
Havent read that, but that being a fantasy world, that night arrangement *could* still work out if the author is feeling squicky, unless during said curse theyre just winked out of existence and replaced with a random appropriate feral animal for the duration (id assume not, or the whole thing would be ended with "and then the hawk flew away and the human guy could not track it down in time, and then the wolf *also* wandered off when it was the girls turn to figure iut where that damn bird had put her")
Red: "It takes an extrmely high-power character to alter the course of the heavens themselves."
General Radahn, the Starscourge: "Good evening."
"And this is while I'm barely conscious"
The dark crystal's three suns aligned prophecy remains my favourite version of this, because it's the greatest opportunity for both sides, each having planned for centuries around it.
It's the only chance for the skeksis to truely cement their power, but also the only chance to restore the urskeks, depending entirely on who managed to play the gelfling card correctly.
'You fool, look at the runtime' is my new favorite audience response.
In ATLAB, the reason the Fire Nation was so prepared was because Azula heard about the invasion from the Earth King while disguised as a Kyoshi warrior. If she hadn't heard about it, I don't think the invasion would have failed. For one, she wouldn't have brought the Dai Li, as she rarely bring them with her anywhere(& she also fear their record of betrayal), so unless she knew an attack is coming, she wouldn't have let them near her during her weakest moment
I do wonder how in the history of the Fire Nation there was never a recorded event of a Solar Eclipse that rendered the citizen's firebending useless. It's either my understanding of the infrequency of eclipses is poor or that the Fire Nation is not that old of a country/empire.
"Loose lips sink ships"
Earth King: "I've never seen a ship."
@@footlong7980
_ They burned everything to do with the Eclipse incase any enemy learn it.
_ In the comic, the history stretch very far back. Although -Ozai- Sozin seal off the section of the royal tomb before him saying the true Fire Nation start with him(not an ego move at all), so he likely destroy any historical document predating him
Edit: I meant Sozin not Ozai. Sorry
Yep
I imagine they probably knew about the Eclipse already just not that team good guy was planning an invasion. A cosmic event that stops firebending is something the Royal Family would know about. It's tough to say what would've happened if Azula never learned about the invasion because we don't know if tucking the Royal Family in a bunker to wait it out was standard procedure or special circumstance. I can see arguments in favor of both. An Eclipse is the perfect time for an assassination attempt and rulers typically ascribe to the better safe than sorry philosophy but on the other hand if they don't have any reason to believe something is gonna happen, why would they bother
5:05 ah, Owl house. When the Collector was finally freed and moved the moon out of orbit with just his finger. His level of power was quite nebulous around that time, so when I saw he performed such a feat with quite literally the move of a finger, I started doing that "going insane/despair" laughter because "they're screwed. They're so screwed. This child has phenomenal cosmic powers at his fingertips and there's nothing and there's nothing the cast could do against him"
14:41 THERE IT IS! And now I realise my actual words were "OH COME ON! HOW DO YOU FIGHT THAT?"
Yeah, that really emphasized how they may have stopped the day of unity but the cost was that they were absolutely fucked
I can fucking hear the scene. I audibly did the "boop" as he moved the moon
You know, when Kiki said "Only The Collector has that power" I imagined something like... vaguely reversing the spell or something. Not, y'know, _casually moving the moon out of the way._
I think they handled the "how do you fight that" problem masterfully...
You don't. They basically taught the Collector lessons that have been enforced throughout the series bc they're just a kid.
And then by having the big bad *keep being the big bad* it allowed for a genuinely satisfying end.
@@Flipface4 Exactly. And it's not like Luz choosing to neutralize a threat way above her paygrade through sheer determination to make friends with them hadn't been foreshadowed by her trying it with almost literally everyone she met on the Boiling Isles. The fact that there were multiple characters that approach didn't work on, alongside multiple who *were* won over, gave it the narrative uncertainty that a great climactic scene needs.
14:14 The transition from epic all-powerful bad guy to the hero going "oh good, looks like that's over" gives me the funniest idea for a series where the legend is that once the sun and moon overlap, one or both simply STAY gone, and the big twist at the end is that despite all the certainty of this fact, their world still works on real-world physics and the thing only lasts a few minutes before returning to normal. But like in pool, it only counts if the hero calls it, so they'll have to earn this knowledge somehow, and reveal it in quite literally the final minutes. Which are also the first minutes.
Could be a good story for exploring how to learn the true and proper turnings of the world in the face of overwhelming confidence that it works some completely other, incorrect way.
I vibe with this intro alot, so many comics were written with a goal that literally will never ever be achieved by convention of "we ride until they axe us."
When Red mentioned the inevitability of cosmic alignments and the impossible power required to alter the cosmos, my mind immediately jumped to Elden Ring and Starscourge Radahn. The dude was such a beast that he held the stars still (and thus prevented the futures of various people magically/astrologically connected to the cosmos) and was able to continue doing so even in the rot-infested, nearly-mindless, shell of his former self state you fight him in.
What I like is how apparently it was tied to his existence so thoroughly that defeating him apparently makes the universe go "OH @#$% I'M LATE" and it speeds up everything to get back to where it's supposed to be.
Legend of Vox Machina S1 has an anti Endgame Inevitability, as the party successfully takes back the city, the villains are forced to attempt their ritual before the solstice, causing it to fail. I'd say this is partly because nothing can be inevitable in a TTRPG setting which allows for player choice, but also that the plan is something which would have entirely flipped the odds against the party had it gone off successfully. The failure of summoning Vecna was probably a real good feeling for the party that showed their preparedness and speed actually saved themselves and the world a lot of trouble.
Spoilers ahead for Critical Roll Campaign 1. You have been warned.
So, I hate to be THAT GUY, but I recall reading about an interview or talkshow where Matt explained Delilah Briarwood actually succeeded with the ritual she and her husband were planning for their dark lord.
Yes, they were waiting for a precise Cosmic Alignment, but that is only because the natural magical Leylines of the world would be at their most potent, and thus maximizing the chance for success of the ritual. They could have performed it at any time, but there would have been a low chance of success.
However! To your point, Lady Briarwood does technically fail, or at least thinks she failed. Partially Because Vox Machina put the pressure on and forced her to perform the ritual early, and also largely because her dark dark lord is a little shit who likes to keep secrets (Something Matt explained in the same interview). Because Lady Delilah was rushed and hadn't been given the full picture, she thinks she failed because she doesn't recognize the 'thing' she summoned is meant to be the next step in the plan for summoning her dark lord.
What's also funny is that while all of this is going on, a certain green scaled sorcerer is utilizing that same Cosmic Alignment to free her red scaled boss. Showing off that Cosmic Alignments don't have to only be tied to a single event.
this is why i like consuming ttrpg media like critical role, the narrative beats are not as predictable. Stated in the video, the plans you hear are the ones that fail, but this is not the case for ttrpg, you hear all the planning stage + the failure or success of the plan is up to chance. The story is also "written" by multiple people. Definitely not for everyone but it makes if feel much more real to me. Books and shows based off of campaigns are great for this too for the unpredictably.
Starscourge Radahn in Elden Ring plays with this trope in an interesting way. He is aware that the movement of the stars turns the wheels of a prophecy and that this prophecy means something bad for the town where he was educated, and uses gravity magic to STOP THE MOVEMENT OF THE STARS, halting the prophecies in their tracks.
8:40 Tv tropes actually has that one covered too. It's called "You cannot thwart Act 1".
I like Stone Ocean's subversion of the cosmic alignment by explaining why the villain needed the new moon (requiring a particular gravity) which leads to the villain realizing that despite the heroes stopping him before it happens (with more than 24 hours to spare) he can achieve the conditions he needs anyways by getting into a special position himself. This is also brilliant as it both demonstrates how the villain is smart and adaptive, yet at the same time a massive hypocrite since his philosophy is that the future is predetermined and humans are powerless and shouldn't bother trying change fate.
Replying to remind myself to read this comment after finishing part 6
Crazy that we got Total Solar Eclipse, Solar Flares, Out of Placs Aurora Borealis, Meteor Showers, and Cosmic Alignment back to back. Medieval peasants would cause this an end of days scenario lol
It's already starting to convince me 😅. Northern Lights as far south as Nevada is absolutely anomalous!
I honestly think it is. Like all of this plus Covid and government corruption really makes me think the apocalypse might happen soon.
@@scottanos9981not just Nevada, though I did see them in my Vegas backyard.
Every single state saw the aurora, even Hawaii!!
Red talking about Avatar and FMA is the true cosmic inevitability
Other people have mentioned him already, but General Radahn the Starscourge has kept the stars from moving through the sky which also keeps people associated with such things like Ranni and Sellen from seeing their ambitions realized despite being infected by Scarlet Rot by his half-sister Malenia which is very impressive.
Three Body Problem is a good example of cosmic alignment mattering in scifi.
Well, not so much the alignment itself as the implications of the alignment being inherently unpredictable.
We gather on this day at 11AM as the stars align for an OSP upload. Just as the prophecy fortold.
As it was written
As declared in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
I would say "Nightfall" is a pretty good example of sci-fi that hinges on a cosmic event.
Possibly the earliest example of this in sci-fi.
@@stevejakab274 Almost. It maybe the earliest sci fi with a solar eclipse (I checked Fred Hoyle's The Black Cloud, but that was 1957, Nightfall is 1941), but, technically, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Poison Belt (the second Professor Challenger novel) is also a cosmic event sci-fi story, and that was published in 1913.
I suppose that John Wyndam's The Day of the Triffids is also sort of a cosmic event story. The Triffids may be the main threat, but it's the meteor shower that blinds nearly everyone that actually makes them a serious menace.
As a novelist and game master, I cannot understate how valid knowing where your story ends/is headed towards.
If you don’t it will show, or else you will be giving yourself so much more overhaul and editing to do, so much so that you might not be able to muster the time or energy to do it.
One of my favorite cosmic alignments is the Day of Unity in The Owl House, because largely the heroes FAIL during the cosmic alignment. Sure, they kinda stop it but only because of the Collector, and that ends up creating multiple problems that are so much worse
14:48 the beauty of this line
She says smoke then RIGHT when Aang Blasts him with air that pulls up smoke *chefs kiss*
This is why I liked the movie 7th son. They needed to beat the witch before the ellipse, where she would get super powerful, and they did. It was a good twist and subversion.
"The act of writing is just about the most unethical thing a person could do." Yeah, this is why I write mostly write slice of life stuff with little to no stakes beyond what the characters themselves construe. My characters are _very_ real people that live in my head with their own thoughts, feelings, emotions, and backstories separate from myself. Like I cannot control them when I write. If I try to plan anything, they _WILL_ find a way to foil it. I have to be careful what I write because I may very well lose their trust.
“It takes an extremely high power character to alter the course of the heavens themselves.”
Lol, said the Collector, Lmao.
I loved it; with the recent eclipse over so much of North America, I was working at the time, and we have MASSIVE window-walls outside the office, so I didn't go outside, because I didn't have the safety glasses, but it was WEIRD how the perfectly blue sky looked like it was casting a giant shadow over literally everything. No clouds in sight, it was just the sun being covered by the moon. My three buddies who DID have the glasses, right, I said to them, "In case those things don't work, don't go blind on me," and afterwards, they all stumble in pretending to be blind, all, "Lilly? Are you here? Is that you?" Snort, I loved working with them. Also that Northern Lights display a few weeks ago, I couldn't see it too well because of freaking light pollution in the city, but the pictures I saw online were PHENOMENAL. I learned some cultural connotations of those, too: to the Inuk, or at least some of them, because 'Inuk" just means 'people" and they're an ENORMOUS, literally globe-spanning set of groups, but to the ones in Northern Canada, the Northern Lights are a bad sign of dead warriors' restless and unhappy spirits wandering around. So you're not actually supposed to look at them for too long, let alone celebrate them. I'm a settler, so I'm only saying what I've read, and I KNOW that this can in no way be totally cross-cultural.
Meanwhile Toriyama was just like, "Oh, full moons make Goku/Gohan go nuts? Eh, I'll just blow up the moon. Problem solved."
Wow.. "The writer is a fickle ally" is such a foreboding phrase for any character with 4th wall awareness...
The Stars have aligned! The Festival is Nigh!
Which is admittedly a weird thing to say, given Radahn stopped the stars from moving. I assume he was being metaphorical.
Hey Red, would you consider a The Phantom of the Opera for a Halloween special? Most people only know it from the musical, which leaves out or changes a LOT. I think it’d be awesome to break down a work made famous by an adaption. Love all your content, thank you for all the work you and Blue put into this channel! ❤
Just FYI, Lost In Adaptation did multiple Phantom videos a few years back, looking at the musical and various film versions.
I'd also be happy with another charity reading throughout October, like Dracula.
@@TheBronyBraeburn YES
This is an old pull, and only ever a book series, but PERN! In Anne McCaffery's PERN series, the whole planetary threat of Thread is caused by a planetary alignment! It's a rare sci-fi series that effectively used this trope (though some books feel more fantasy than sci-fi). Wish it was more known, because it fits SO well
Sadly the media rights to Pern are currently in licensing hell. And have been since the 90s. It reminds of the tragic licensing of Macross.
FMA still had one of the coolest Cosmic Alignments in fiction
Edit: of course Red makes mention of it 10/10
Sometimes the cosmic alignment is just for looks. Xenoblade chronicles 3 has a solar eclipse completely coincidentally (in canon) when a character is going to die for non-eclipse related reasons
Was looking for this comment, I’d love Xenoblade to be featured in one of these. However, the eclipse is chosen by the Agnians as the day on which they execute the lost numbers at hopes rest so it’s not entirely spectacle.
Kind of loving what you said at the end: "the writer is a fickle ally", makes the author seem like an eldritch god to the characters, one they can gain the favor of by being more interesting, but at greater risk. Kinda makes me want to write a story where the villain breaks the 4th wall and is aware they are a fictional character, but instead of breaking down in existential dread, they try to strike a bargain with the author where they keep gaining more power as long as they promise to be interesting. Sort of a spin on the idea a lot of writers have said that its like the characters write themselves at a certain point, the villain knows they exist as an idea in writer's head, and they know as long as they are an interesting idea, they can get what they want.
One of my favorite Asimov stories is called Nightfall, and involves a planet with several small suns suddenly contending with a multi-eclipse which will leave them in darkness for the first time in thousands of years, and the inhabitants freaking out trying to prepare for the event. It’s a short story well worth checking out!
"The writer is a fickle ally, and no friend to the Big Bad..." I love that line! :D I've been thinking a lot about the kinds of stories where the characters become aware of the story/audience/author in some way, it would definitely be interesting to see that kind of story overlapped with one about a cosmic alignment... if they became aware that the story itself was important, maybe it could be an analogy for learning more about how the universe works in the sense of understanding how stars move, or like maybe the mage who works out the truth says that they're using telescopes to find more stellar alignments to draw power from, but in reality they're learning more about storytelling in an effort to negotiate with the author somehow to justify their new powerups...
Bro that sound cool! I just imagining a villain character going mad from the revelation that they are never going to win or can never truly win so they try to set up a situation that causes a big but unobvious plot hole that will ruin or reck the story once people find it out.
However people find the logic behind setting up the plot hole and be impressed by it and the character's attempted success.
@@hexretro8112 That's so cool!! A villain powerful enough to break the logic of the story but still not powerful enough to win, and then it becomes clear the plot hole is part of the story itself... The villain can't win against the author... I feel like the biggest challenge with that would be balancing the reveal with enough evidence that it was planned all along so the audience doesn't think it's just lazy writing after the author realised their mistake, so maybe it would be better to have an inconsistency that turns out to make sense after all as in the villain only thinks/(makes it look like) they can break the rules but really they just found a new ruleset or something? But then again, it would be funny if the audience is split on whether they believe it was intentionally planned all along or not, with fans of the villain saying how clever they were, and others losing respect for both the villain and the author - the villain technically wins against the author, but only in the eyes of those who aren't interested in paying attention to them anymore! Which would be a kind of meta moral maybe about how the reason you can't really fight the narrative is because the people in the real world will always tend towards seeking the most satisfying narrative so those are the only ones that survive almost in an evolutionary kind of way... A world made of imagination is fragile, and if the characters in it try to imagine something more, it could go either way towards making it unique and special and remembered forever, or destroying it completely...
@@eloquentornotThank you for making me realized how much this idea depends on audience interpretation.
Maybe it could be made more obvious by having the story be told similar to the princess and the bride?
With small narration about the "author" or foot notes and comments by the "author" about thing in the story?
This reminds me of Alan Wake as it is re-read again.
Going through this actually made me want to see a story where the good guys are against these bad guys that are oppressively powerful, but the cosmic event that's coming would make them straight up unstoppable. No question, no chance. They must be defeated before it happens no matter what. And the heroes do. I am imagining a nice ending where they manage to defeat them before the event, perhaps seconds or minutes before, or the day before. Then they enjoy the beauty of the cosmic event as a relief or straight up celebration. Turning an event of absolute dread to symbol of victory. I feel like there could be a lot of interesting messaging or themes you could tie to that as well.
4:00 for example, tui t sutherland's wings of fire series takes place in a world with 3 moons; when all three moons are full, which only happens once every few hundred to thousand years, one species of dragon born in its moonlight gains powerful future sight and mind reading, to the point where one might see hundreds of years into the future after their death.
When I think of cosmic alignments, my mind immediately goes to Berserk's infamous eclipse. And I think that has a lot of thematic relevance for the story, with its themes of causality and inevitability. The Golden Age and Eclipse arcs come after an arc showing Guts as he became after the Eclipse. We know that Guts is going to experience a tragedy that turns him into what he will become, it is inevitable, and nothing can stop it... just like how no one can stop the movement of the sun, moon, and stars.
i would love a trope talk about evil clowns 😈🤡
Evil clowns are more a part of a broader "Subversion of Innocence" trope. Where everything good is scary and bad. I don't remember if Red's covered something like that before. Seems like she'd have to have hit on it at some point.
Like The Joker
In the novel It by Stephen King, the titular monster is a shape shifter capable of taking many forms, but the one It prefers using most is Pennywise the Dancing Clown. The reason why It prefers this form over the others is because children like clowns which happen to be It's favorite prey.
Joker, Pennywise, that one guy from Akame ga Kill... There are honestly a lot of example of media having clowns play the role of villains.
The Mad Pierrot from Cowboy Bebop
You know what's a fun trope with cosmic alignment maguffin stuff? The heroes stop the main villain from collecting all the maguffins in time for the cosmic event... but that lets some other villain seize the opportunity to get those maguffins and take advantage of the event instead. It's a scenario where the heroes actually did everything right but without it having to have that anticlimactic "well that was easier than we expected" element, but also takes us a little by surprise because it's a pretty rare occurrence and not how we expect the story to go from how it's set up, y'know?
Not cosmic alignment, but an anime called Kyo Kara Maoh did something like that. The heroes gather all the artifacts of doom to keep them out of the evil empire’s hands, but in doing so unknowingly play into the real big bad’s plan to unseal themself from the artifacts.
"The stars are not in position for this kind of tribute!" "Stars!...Can't do it...not today..."
TVTropes calls the Endgame Inevitability “You Cannot Stop Stage One”, for the record
evil always triumphs in the middle!
I really like Red's point that this is mostly used in fantasy, but not sci-fi. However, there has been one very high profile sci-fi property that used a cosmic alignment very well: Andor.
Episodes 3-6 are a sci-fi heist, and they have to use what is basically a massive meteor shower to provide distraction and cover.
Edit: And, as soon as I post this, I see that Red makes that point as well. Oh well.
How about Three Body Problem? That’s a sci-fi story that uses a cosmic alignment.
There is one more cosmic alignment in Avatar that's worth mentioning: the full moon in The Siege of the North, mainly because Zhao, knowing that waterbenders are at their most powerful during the full moon, tries to prevent the full moon by killing the moon spirit. Zhao's hubris at having "killed the moon" leads directly to his defeat thanks to that very action angering the Ocean Spirit, who destroys Zhao's entire fleet and kills Zhao (yes, I know Legend of Korra reveals that he was actually taken to the fog of lost souls, but in terms of narrative purpose, Zhao was essentially killed off).
More like he gets fate worse than death.
To be fair Zhao could have been killed and his soul dragged into the Fog of Lost Souls as a sort of hell for his crime.
no that full moon had zero bearing on Zhao's plan. he would have killed the moon regardless of which phase it was in.
@@ratchet1freak Good point. I should correct my comment.
That said, the overall point: that he wanted to kill the moon to weaken the waterbenders and be remembered as the moon-slayer, and the result was the ocean spirit destroying all his ambitions and giving him a fate worse than death, still stands.
@@ratchet1freak Moon eclipse happened exactly because he killed Moon Spirit.
My favorite version of this trope (which FMA:B uses to some extent) is when the cosmic alignment itself is neutral but it enables something that a bad guy can essentially unlock during that time frame.
For example, imagine there is a great evil locked away by some magic. And that magic, for some reason, gets weaker during some cosmic event. But that isn't enough to break it by itself. You also need some collection of Maguffins im order to break the evil loose. Whether those maguffins be parts to a magic amplifier that allows someone to break the seal by force, or physical keys that are required to get through the 2nd security layer after the seal is broken, or what have you. That way there is an explanation of why this hasn't happened before. "This ancient evil was locked away 10,000 years ago". Ok, so why hasn't anyone broken the spell since then? 10 tbousand years is a long time my guy. Well, it's because nobody has been able to get all the maguffins in the same place as the seal while the star thing was happening, so it hasn't been a problem until now.
I can't think of a show that does this off the top of my head but I know there are a ton.
The first Tomb Raider movie (2001) kind of does that. There is the Triangle of Light, broken into two pieces and hidden in different parts of the world. You can only unlock the resting places of the pieces at a specific time during the alignment of all nine planets (or, the first part of the Triangle when some of the planets align, and the second part when the rest of the planets align a couple days later). The thing is, you need the key to unlock the pieces or you're screwed. The difference between this and your example is that the alignment is so rare that the last time it happened was when the Triangle was created, so there wasn't really any previous chance that got wasted.
The Legend of Korra Book 2 have Spirit of Darkness locked up for 10.000 years until Harmonic Convergence free him with help of main villain.
Full Metal Alchemist and Avatar Last Airbender are two giants of storytelling that I'm happy to see referenced as often as possible. They're just that good.
Dark Crystal clips! Yes! That made my day.
4:40 The practical effects/mechanics for that planetarium are still quite impressive
"When triple shines the single sun..."
"What was sundered and undone"
The Dark Crystal is certainly my favorite example of this trope!
My favorite Cosmic Alignment is in the sci-fi movie that debuted Riddick, Pitch Black. Excellent use of eclipse shenaniganry.
Ooo. Good choice. I first thought of Three Body Problem, but Pitch Black is another good one.
Fifth Element, wherein an alignment summons a planetary devourer. Cheesy but great watch.
And it's one of the as-mentioned relatively rare instances of it working in science fiction beyond simply "looking cool", because it's not some big fantastical occurrence that was prophesied or the culmination of some convoluted plot by powerful individuals -- the natural day/night cycle of this planet is just _really weird_ from an Earth-centric perspective and understanding, and the dominant native species on the planet has adapted accordingly. Researchers / colonists / shipwreck survivors however aren't necessarily going to know any of this, and the protagonists were just so unlucky as to arrive at roughly the worst possible time.
Excellent use of 'shenaniganry' : )
As soon as Red said Cosmic Alignment rarely happens in sci-fi, my mind went straight to Pitch Black.
A star walks into a black hole but doesn't seen phased. The black hole then turns to the star and says, "I don't think you understand the gravity of this situation."
Literally just finished reading “the mother of learning” and the whole premise is based off of a cosmic alignment! To the point where it’s only mentioned a handful of times, but is the thing that powers both the villains plans, as well as the hero’s
2:41 I can name a sci-fi that very subtly uses the cosmic alignment: The Fifth Element. Cosmic alignment basically summons an evil planet and the race is on to stop it from destroying Earth.
I applaud you for that reference
There's a sci-fi cosmic alignment in Doctor Who as well. The Daleks steal 27 celestial bodies to make a bomb that threatens to destroy everything everywhere except daleks.
Really throws the conclusion of this episode back in Red's face TBH. Davros' doomsday weapon ran on his own schedule!
I was also thinking about The Fifth Element. What's cool about it is that the Cosmic Alignment is the inciting incident, not the end goal.
I finished watching Netflix's Three Body Problem adaptation recently and watching this I got a few giggles. While it's not your usual prophetic cosmic alignment it is a sci-fi where astronomical alignments play a huge role in the story. Particularly the fact that in the titular three body problem they can't be predicted.
“Night of your birth. Thirty-three. The Leonids they were called. God how the stars did fall. I looked for blackness, holes in the heaven. The Dipper stove.”
My favorite use of the cosmic alignment trope is a hyped up eclipse that is genuinely only used because it turns the lights out. It doesn't happen often (thankfully) but the anti-astrology part of me loves it.
It’s always funny seeing the time released ago counter being in the seconds
Homestuck REALLY likes this trope
Homestuck is an interesting example too, because in large part we're not talking an eclipse; we're talking the end of the world as the protagonists know it, and the stakes are not "prevent the apocalypse" but rather "make sure there's a future following the apocalypse"
@@macaronsncheese9835 yes but also during derse's eclipse you can hear the horrorterrors, and when prospit is closest to skaia you can see prophesies. And also SBURB likes throwing meteors at players obviously
For a sci-fi (sort of) example of cosmic alignment, the real-life alignment of the planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune on the same side of the sun in the 1970s and 80s made it possible for the Voyager 2 space probe to visit all four of them in one shot, which will not be practical again for 100 years. If you read about the Voyager program, you see a mad scramble at NASA to get the budget and expertise to build and launch a highly advanced probe before the cosmic alignment slipped away and the opportunity for glorious SCIENCE! was lost.
I feel like you could make a fictional story about something like that, where the alignment is an opportunity for exploration and wonder rather than power.
This channel has been a never ending source to make me a better writer, and I thank you for everything you do.
writers do seem to love it when the sky gets funky !!
I didn't see the Trope Talk tag and assumed I was gonna listen to Red go off about space again 🤣 not disappointed in either event
I mean, kind of!😊
now i want to read a book where the villain outright refuses to transform into their final form, because they are genre-savvy enough to try to prolong their invulnerability by using endgame inevitability to their advantage.
"You fool, look at the runtime!"
This is one my favorite bits from the sketches in a while: )
Reminds me of the game "Sea of Stars", which is one of the few examples that completely breaks the general rules of this trope you laid out. The first part is pretty standard, leading up to a deadline of a Solar eclipse, and then the main characters get an amulet that literally lets them summon a solar eclipse (they have been able to control the time of day before that) and near the end they raise a moon from the bottom of the ocean back into the sky (so that they can summon a solar eclipse in this parallel dimension as well). (the end game is them literally becoming gods, so their power is justified in story)
honestly tho a chaotic evil Sci-Fi villain waiting for an eclipse to start [insert evil plan] because it looks awesome could be pretty funny (and good characterization) as well as adding good tension when the protagonists are ruining his fun which may make him decide fuck it we're doing this now.
Ozymandias is gonna make it happen half an hour ago, if he has to.
Cosmic alignments are also really important when sending things beyond Earth's orbit. if the planets are aligned in just the right way, a space probe can use them to gravitationally slingshot themselves towards their target at a higher speed and cut down on travel time. If a character for whatever reason needs to get to Mars as fast as possible they better hope the planets are aligned in their favor.
I am so glad you included Owl House because I think it’s an excellent example of the Endgame Inevitability while having interesting and fulfilling adventures in the meantime.
6:17 Finally an Owl House Reference!!!!!!!
She referenced it in a few other trope talks, but never mentioned it by name.
The cosmos have aligned for this to post as I opened TH-cam
There is a variation of Cosmic Alignment used in hard sci-fi: the Launch Window. If you don't get going at the specific time, you've got a long long wait for the next chance. This can be particularly tense if the timing is for the trip home, and missing the deadline will leave you stranded.
Stranded or at least having to take a very long time and potentially need someone to meet you halfway.
This series is easily my favorite thing on the internet. Please never stop making these!