I've been reminded that the last season of Attack on Titan is pretty mystery box-y, which I kinda forgot because it's one of those shows that I cut off early in my head - if you watch only through season 3, it's a great and fully complete narrative, like Westworld season 1, or the first three seasons of Chuck. I've added "Knowing When to End Your Story" to the list.
I was about to mention that XD Attack on Titan's basement and also the way it handles flashbacks are so darn rough Well anyway I'll recommend the Anime "Ranger Reject" only has one season so far but it's pretty darn entertaining I've heard it's like The Boys but Super Sentai localization calls it "Go Go Loser Ranger" It's about a Puddy (power ranger villain mook) on his quest for vengeance after 12 years of WWF slavery after their bosses have already long been dealt with Story keeps moving with very few breaks it's pretty good anyway I enjoy these vidyas keep em up +best
Like Battlestar Galactica...which should have ended the exact second Earth showed up on the screen, instead of dissapearing so far up it's own ass it turned into a wierd Mormon ouroboros.
Honestly though I feel like AOT pulls off the final season pretty well anyway - we're still watching how the characters adapt and change to the world around them, and then start watching the ramifications that THEIR decisions have on the world. The ending is divisive, but it's not truly awful in all aspects, and spends a lot of time dissecting the different sides of a nuanced conflict that ultimately ends with a choice they all have to make to finish their narrative arks. If anything I feel like AOT having a mystery box, (even though you mentioned the last season, let's not forget that "the basement" is a mystery box throughout all seasons 1-3) it DOESN'T suck, which means that all you have to do to make it work is understand how to keep the narrative moving at a natural rate. As for "know when to end your show", should it have been ended after the basement was opened? Because deciding not to resolve anything just because "I've done good enough this far" is certainly a CHOICE for ending a story, but personally I wouldn't call it a good one.
@@thomasmiller8289 Admittedly I don't know much else he's done, but years ago he did these Half-Life comedy sketches. I re-watched them yesterday before watching his more recent commentary stuff and it felt like Gordon Freeman was telling me why modern writing kinda sucks.
There is a debate in the anime community between the three-episode rule, which holds that you should never judge an anime until you've watched at least three episodes of it because sometimes it can take some time to set up a premise properly, and the one-episode rule, which holds that you can tell if an anime has good animation, voice acting, and episode-per-episode pacing from a single episode whether or not you fully understand the premise by the end of that episode. Basically no one argues that you should watch an entire 12+ episode season of an anime before judging whether or not it is worth your time, and I don't see why that's any more reasonable for a Netflix show. Showrunners have three episodes to sell the show *if the audience is feeling generous*.
@@_Vesper Kyle talks early on about how he judged the Fallout show on its first two episodes. My point is that this is fine, and even completely typical (sort of - it's the exact midpoint between the two most common positions) of a community where media longer than 2-3 hours is the norm.
@@OverlordMaldeus ah okay, yeah I think that's a fair point, though I think the real complaints people had were that he kind of "reviews" the show despite not watching most of it
So how do you judge naruto then?. I dont think three episodes would hook folk i say the first chunian exam as i tried to quit three times but everyone kept going get to that arc and it gets good, but as a friend that siad this on ff13, i ant playing a game for 30 hours till it gets good.
That "Video Games Aren't Movies" video concept is one I would watch immediately. I have SO many thoughts on games' unique toolbox as a storytelling medium, and the industry's varying amounts of success using it.
@@capiscrazy9732 the perfect example is the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, nails every single medium there is, radio show, tv show, movie, game, books
@@goldjaw I'm pretty critical of TLoU in this regard too. I don't even know if I'd be that harsh on it but it definitely deserves to be a focal piece of the discussion.
I get the feeling that Kyle bringing up Niel so often in these videos will eventually lead to them fighting each other with swords on the deck of a sinking cruise ship
District 9 is a perfect mystery. It starts with the end, with people being interviewed about what went wrong, before you even know what the 'it' that went wrong is. This means the story gives itself nowhere to escape to. The 'what' is immediately revealed, the 'how' is the mystery that is all that is left to uncover in the rest of the movie.
Yeah, that was a pretty good movie too, great build up to the big fight in the slums and Wikus' character development. Back in a time when competent people made movies.
I was reading shadow over innsmouth recently and I loved how it "had it's cake and ate it too" in terms of mystery/subverting expectations. At the very start of the story it tells you "this entire town was arrested and its reef was blown up by the government". And the solution of the mystery is exactly what it promised, the town is evil and its reef is the source. But because it was so straightforward in the setup and payoff of that mystery, it allowed another mystery to build right under your nose, and you don't realize it's even something that needed solving until the very end when your expectations are completely subverted and it turns out our innocent narrator is descended from this evil town and is now accepting the evil into himself.
@@lr- you should watch Dagon, it's a mid budget movie of that story. Lots of fish people done up with practical effects, sticking close to the story and made with passion. You'd love it
I spent last year making my way through the whole original canon of Sherlock Holmes stories. I think on reflection one of their greatest strengths is actually the frame story they operate under that do such a great job of making promises. Nearly every single Holmes story opens with Dr. Watson briefly introducing the story you're about to read and some of its details. By the end it's all been handled; who did the crime? Why, how and how did Sherlock Holmes crack the case? It's such a treat and was weirdly refreshing for something written about a hundred years ago
Actually, the franchise is also a perfect example of what the weird shit that eventually happened. Becauyse BBC' Sherlock has NOTHING of it. Instead you were giving cases you could not possible solve while Sherlock always had more information than you and then uses that knowledge to explain it to you in the end.
I don't think JJ Abrams actually knows what mystery is. He cares more about making things seem mysterious than actually crafting a mystery. Writers like Abrams just treat any information that you don't immediately have as a mystery. It doesn't matter if they actually try to hide the information or if the characters have to investigate or if a character tries to mislead people about their motivations. If a new character is introduced and they don't immediately tell you who they are, it's treated as a mystery even if the character tells their life story the very next episode.
A good mystery has the chance of being solved by the audience ahead of time using clues littered throughout the story. Hard for Abrams to do when he makes a mystery box and then forgets to put anything in it.
it's what i would call suspense. it can be used to drive scenes or moments, but it shouldn't be one of the big motivators the audience has to keep watching, you run the risk of making the media seem retrospectivley hollow. the thriller genre is basically nothing more than interplay between small moments of suspense and larger mysteries.
@@crediblesalamander8056but suspense require tension. Abrams will try to make basic information mysterious and dramatic and it doesn't really have much of an effect on the story or characters.
I readied my metaphorical hand holding a rock aimed for your head, before it occured to me that i'm being quite the fanboy; which i hate. and that you raise some good points then again; he helped made FRINGE and (s1) westworld. which are absolute gems therefore, i am hereby throwing metaphorical rocks at your face!! xD
I couldn’t with YOU the poor kid neighbor trying to study while his mom phucked the abusive boyfriend so loudly you could hear them in the corridor broke me. Too close to my own childhood I just couldn’t keep watching. Borderline parents are a trip.
@@futurestoryteller If you're a pedantic fuck, then yes, by the standards of the early 1900's, videogames would fall under the category "movies", because it has moving pictures. Of course, such a category would also include flipbooks, regardless of whether they are being recorded and put on a screen. I'm pretty sure you don't call flipbooks movies. Of course, I can also very equally be a pedantic fuck, and claim that by SEVERAL definitions, videogames in fact AREN'T movies. Because some definitions are updates. Some of them include the default "passivity" of a movie watcher. Some of them aren't even definitions in the classical sense of the word, and are really just large umbrella descriptions, just like how our ACTUAL understanding of "movie" works. (Definitions are, mostly, useless in any language. They are there to have some sort of common ground, but are RARELY ever truly used in any practical sense. Language works via pattern recognition and descriptions with a general consensus on the most used phrasing and terminology.) And lastly, I'll out-pedantic-fuck you. Because you stated "games are movies" "objectively". They in fact are not. VIDEOgames might be, by your ancient standard. But not "games". A boardgame is a game. Football is a game. None of these are movies. Therefore, your pedantry was not pedantic enough by your own "objective" standards. Now be quiet and let the grown people talk.
In this spectrum there's also the columbo format ("howcatchem" or "inverted detective story"), where you start with a crime getting comitted and are then asked how the detective will solve it (other examples are Poker Face and Furuhata Ninzaburō), this provides a weird balance between mystery and drama, as with the context of the murder itself any clue will already be significant to us when we learn about it giving the drama of the detective interacting with the killer and figuring out how to prove he is the killer and the relevant cat and mouse like, second episode of Furuhata Ninzaburo, [spoilers it's good, go watch it] Furuhata pulls the trick of making the killer hide something that he convinces the killer is evidence, but without telling the audience explicitly, this gives us the mystery of what each character knows while also giving the drama of Furuhara playing dumb while the killer somewhat clumsily tries to hide the evidence with him in the room
Yeah, those are pretty great. I definitely like stories where the writers don't feel any pressure to keep "the twist" from the audience. Stories that are desperate to keep a secret can often fall into the trap of doing really dumb things to keep the secret going, but stories that don't care are free to explore the consequences of that twist much better.
some ace attorney cases do this but it still works really well because instead of trying to figure out who did it you are trying to figure out how to prove it
Thank you for giving me a word to explain why I like AOT's story other than suspense and action. It's insane how some characters which would later be important were hiding in plain sight and you never notice that unless you have a keen eye. I personally was so absorbed in the ongoing plot (and reading subtitles tbh) that it was impossible for me to notice how certain characters react ever so slightly different to the events happening in front of them.
AoT is a really, really good example of the writer having everything planned from the beginning, and the cool stuff you can do when you have those plans already in place. Ironically, One Piece is also like that, it just also is bogged down with hundreds of episodes of filler and glacially slow pacing.
@@moon_wizard1250 Attack on titan is story-telling at it's most efficient, with some minor drawbacks here and there. One piece is the exact opposite. It's not really a story, but it pretends to be one. It's an addiction for those that are too stupid to turn off the show after 10 episodes. It's 99.99% filler, and the remaining 0.01 percent builds up to something. And then the writer can pretend he has got something planned. It's like having a bottle filled almost to the brink with oil and filling the last tiny bubble of air with water. You can pretend it's a bottle of water all you like, but you'd be wrong. It's a bottle of oil with a slight hint of water in it. That's one-piece.
As someone who's been getting in to writing recently, my favourite line in any movie is "If she would only believe, the thief would be able to fly through the air, and even drain a lake of its water", from Castle of Cagliostro. It's classic Chekov's Gun. Even further back, it's a classic line of prophecy from folklore or mythology. That's how you hook an audience.
Sort of the opposite problem of this is when a tv show has a solid, well structured mystery arc that gets nicely resolved over the first season, and then you have to figure out what the hell to do now. See Veronica Mars and Altered Carbon.
I feel like it's perfectly fine to make one solid, well structured season of a show. Of course if something is successful people no doubt want it to be made forever until it stops making money but in an ideal world shows could end when they're done.
@@Carrotspy That may work, but you can't have too much, because all of that has to happen in the same universe with the same rules and same characters. Like when you introduce a new powerful character at the 5th mystery, then you have to explain where he/she was during the first 4. Or the other way around, a gadget the heroes use to solve the first one can get really inconvenient for all of the upcoming ones. And it gets weird when a group of normal people has to save the world every week from unrelated threats. May work with superheroes, but even then you have the issue of a new bad buy popping into existence every week. There are ways to deal with these issues, but it requires careful planning and a lot of discipline from the writers. Babylon 5 did a great job with this, almost all threats are foreshadowed from the start, and interact with each other in the background.
@@phoenixrising1992 The dynamic between Blue and Kyle remind me of that video that Tomska and Tom Scott made, like they are both very nerdy but they carry themselves very differently.
Now You See Me is interesting because when you watch it, it's really fun! Tons of spectacle! It's a thrill from start to finish! And then you look back on it and go "hey wait a minute absolutely none of these characters had anything resembling a character arc, or gave us any reason to be invested in them whatsoever".
That movie still makes me mad just because of how smug the ending feels. It felt like the writer's were patting themselves on the back for their brilliant "magic trick," when there was no way for anyone to actually figure out the twist without some serious leaps of logic. It's not misdirection if there's nowhere else to go!
@@yellowmaster52 But that's the thing. The movie DIDN'T feel like a magic trick. It felt like a 'prank gone wrong' kinda trick. To me it was mostly because none of the magic felt like magic tricks. They felt like CGI shortcuts. If the movie was done with completely practical effects or real stage magic the effect would've been amazing. The 'mastermind' behind it all was still a cheap trick and unbelievable.
Just like a magic trick, they make you pay attention to other stuff so that a mediocre script with no meaning can pass right in front of you without you noticing it
If you haven't, try Invincible. I won't spoil, of course, but the main mystery has its SOLUTION revealed at the very beginning. The rest of the season is built around discovering the MOTIVE. A very fun mystery in my opinion.
I really appreciate the time you put into making these videos. I love mid-length opinion pieces like this - where someone experienced in a field comments on that field as an expert, and admits humility even in their expert opinion. Just the way you present and speak glues me to the video, to keep listening until the end just to see what next inventive idiom you come up with. Keep rocking, dude.
It's "fair" to say "I stopped watching" for literally any reason because you have no obligation to watch. That doesn't mean the actual reason is having the disciplined focus of a methed-out trailer park squirrel.
4:05 I think in case of Fallout the answer would be "Dude! That's Fallout! What do you think would happen in a show based on Fallout? Just watch! I promise - that's Fallout!". I'm not trying to defend this mentality - all I'm saying is that in this case the writers and showrunners think that the name alone should hook the audience and they can get away with "I woke up, brushed my teeth and went to work, listening to that annoying song IN A FALLOUT UNIVERSE!"
Maybe that's enough for some shows. I mean, I will boot up Fallout and just go wandering around aimlessly for a few hours and consider that a fun evening. I just like being in the Fallout universe. And there's millions of people like that. You can have a successful show without solving a mystery or having a point. The good part of Avatar was just existing in Pandoran culture and it was really, really good.
I think this whole criticism is weirdly applied here. The show gives you quite a bit of what's going on. Lucy's dad knows of Moldaver, someone coming from the surface who for some reason kidnaps him. You are also shown that her mother is supposedly dead since she was little yet Moldaver knows her. The premise is quite literally "Lucy is going to find her dad, Maximus is going to rise in the Brotherhood, and the Ghoul will chase his bounty" and all of that comes to fruition. Aang defeats Ozai but you aren't shown how. Romeo and Juliet die but the circumstances are complex and not given immediately.
@@excalibur2772it seems like somebody who went into the show with a preconceived critique trying to force it to fit even though it doesn't. Like this is just a critique of Lost applied to a different show but none of the problems of Lost are presented here. By the last episode of the season the 2 out of every 3 plots are resolved and obviously as a streaming show they'd want to leave it open ended for season 2. Loads of my friends who never played a fallout game said it was great, so I know I'm not just fanning over a fallout product like i have been known to do. I don't love the twist in the last couple episodes about the cold fusion macguffin but we got a resolution to multiple arcs, particularly Lucy's plot to try to figure out what happened to her vault.
@@SineN0mine3 Too bad the show openly contradicts the lore on so many places, while also openly contradicting what it itself had established not a few episodes ago. Or it actively rettcons it's own rettcons. But fanboys were too busy gawking at the plastic cgi effects and all the references they could make a tally of they didn't notice. It's a mediocre enough show for a person with a functional brain. It's a straight up bad show for a person with a functional brain and active knowledge of the fallout universe.
12:35 While you're right that there's a lot of poorly written women in anime, you can't really use Chobits as an example, because the author was trying to write a robot with 0 memories learning about the world and gaining sentience. They didn't do a great job with that (from what I remember), but they clearly weren't trying to write woman like you seem to be referring to. Still worth a video topic, I just don't think that particular show is a useful example for such a discussion.
Yeah, and I'd point out anime is an entire medium with shows aimed at a lot of different demographics, it'd be silly to be put off from watching Western movies altogether because there were some sex comedies aimed at teen boys like American Pie a generation ago that were horny in ways you find uncomfortable, it's just as silly to be put off from anime over the same kind of thing.
But the female characters in Chobits and shows like still dominate anime as a whole. I could see if 75% of the US film industry featured characters like the ones in American Pie even if they were aimed at adults but that’s not true. Even anime and manga aimed at women have this problem. The misogyny specific to Anime is off putting not just because it’s foreign to western viewers but because it’s so incredibly widespread and baked into so much of it.
I thought the same exact thing when that clip showed up. If you're gonna make this point about anime in general you can find many other clips that can better illustrate it
@@Sugarspicekanekalon "American Pie" would still be an example of a woman, but Chobits is mainly about a robot. The way you'd write them is inherently different, as the author wasn't trying to write a female character, instead it was more like a naive robot child learning about the world.
I've been on the door monster train for many years now, and it's always been a fun if somewhat sporadic ride. I am so here for Kyle does video essays about media, but with door monster brand funny slathered all over it, I don't even have the words to express it. This is already my favorite thing you have ever done, and you've done so many of my favorite things. Keep it up man, fan for life!
You are good at this. Kyle explains writing. Perun explains war economics. Scholagladiatoria explains swords. Drachinifel explains ships. Soon I'll be able to write a pirate story! Or become a pirate. Still deciding...
I recently rewatched Shutter Island and that does recontextualization incredibly well. So well in fact that many people who watch it don't believe the twist actually happened. The strength in that one is the plot lays out so plausibly but not predictably that you still get twists in the story as the horror of what you believe happens is laid out. Then the twist comes and suddenly everything makes so much more sense.
Hero is an interesting exercise in recontextualization. It keeps flipping its motivations around events so the ending feels like a coin toss but the tales are entrancing.
The twist is made so good that the first time i watched i found it cheap and kinda hated it. But then i watched it again only because my family wanted to watch, and knowing the ending made me notice all the little details and inconsistencies that were there from the start, but my mind simply ignored on the first watch
It's actually pretty surreal finding anybody who didn't know the twist ahead of time. When the film came out most people figured it out from the trailers. Some people who read the book figured it out in the middle - which is an experience a lot of people have with the movie. So it felt like an utter rarity at the time for anyone to be blown away by the twist, instead of just the filmmaking.
Lost: There's a plane crash bad enough the plane is broken apart, yet everyone falls neatly into (many) walks away or instantly dead, no worrying injury. There's a smoke monster, but that's just never gonna matter. Forget about all that and watch these idiots torture each other for no reason at all since what should bother them never does. Okay, my memory of the thing is a bit vague. Maybe that's part of the problem.
@@0LoneTech Nope, am currently rewatching it for this very reason and I can tell you your recollection makes more sense than the actual show. If I was tasked to write the ending that explains all of the mysteries in Lost I think my brain might actually explode. I have never seen a show that unexplainable before, nor will I for the rest of my life. I know, because some magic numbers told me.
@@mrmcawesome9746 My plot summary is this : There are two groups on an island, one desperately wants to get off the island, the other desperately wants them to get off the island, so naturally they start killing each other.
@@andrasbiro3007 I don't know what angle you're coming at this from, but by my recollection the end reveals two oppositional forces, one that wants to keep people there (or, one person at least), and another that wants them to leave
Honestly from what i learned about Kyle from this video is that he would probably enjoy the Warhammer 40k Ciaphas Cain Book series, although with him being way more into the writing scene than i am there could be cripes that he has that go way over my head. (if he ready this i recomend listening to them as an audiobook)
I feel like a really good recent example of the "mystery box" style of show being done really well is the anime "Heavenly Delusions" because it presents with you with a mystery box and the show does a very good job of having you find out a little more of what's inside of it each episode. It's been one of my favorite mystery shows recently.
Wow, I'm really enjoying this new content. It's fun, relatable, and refreshing to see someone not just SAY that modern stories aren't as good as they were before, but actually EXPLAIN why in an entertaining format from an educated perspective.
You are not the only one, I watched the first two episodes of fallout and thought it was ok, wasn't really interested in watching more but thought I would give it another go and really enjoyed the show. There is something about those first two episodes that fails to capture the imagination and I think you explained it well last time by having a lack of impact of any of the decisions and no real consequences. It doesn't attach you to any of the characters or ground you in the universe. But then it gets so much better as the consequences become real and you learn way more.
I have it the One Punch Man treatment. The first episode of OP man is not actually hooking and didn’t get me, but I gave it a second episode and that one was where the REAL hook begins. I also felt that the first two episodes of Fallout weren’t interesting, but the later stuff became more intriguing.
That list that keeps getting updated is a very humorous through-line, while also presenting an intriguing invitation for what will happen in further episodes.
I just saw "Now You See Me" less than a week ago, and I think there was one aspect that foreshadowed the twist: that the detective was hilariously bad at his job. He got duped by illusions time after time, did not recognize when his own tracker was pickpocketed onto him, and even continued to lead other detectives astray when he should have had more experience with the magicians. I am not defending it, to be clear. It's the same issue I have with Nia in Xenoblade 2 (I know that is the hottest take I have, I think that she is a good character that is overrated, not a bad character). You can decide to recontextualize everything later, but if it's not enjoyable before the new context, then it's still an overall bad story because your first watch is without the context.
My favourite thing about the Fallout show is that my friend said "There's a big question about who exactly dropped the bombs" and my immediate reaction without thinking was "We already know that, it was the Zebras." And I realized that I have read WAY TOO MUCH MY LITTLE PONY FANFICTION
Don’t the games cover that? I forget if there’s an actual answer or it’s “What? Who cares? Look at the state of everything! It still happened, it doesn’t matter who did it!”
The show YOU definitely becomes both of the things you mentioned even just late in the first season(though the next seasons really make the characters a lot better and the predicaments a lot more interesting). The end game of the main character does become a tangible thing, concerned primarily with dealing with the consequences of the first season while also doing the same thing that got him into trouble all over again. I admit the first season isn't the best(and especially the first couple episodes), but it really picks up.
7:21 a great recent example of a promise you can't keep was from Doctor Who. in the generation where the doctor was a woman, there was a long plot arc about the doctor's true identity, and when it finally came time to reveal it to the audience, the answer was literally "does it even matter?" Actually, that's not a promise that couldn't be kept, just a promise that wasn't.
I love mfs who don't/haven't experienced much of a thing voicing a very strong opinion about those things for 25 minutes, especially when his takes on the things I am familiar with are over a decade out of date.
I think recontextualization handled masterfully was why I enjoyed Tunic so much. I played it in like 5 2-hour sessions, and at the end of each one, I had to look at all the information I thought I had about the world so far differently. It's an amazing game if you haven't played it!
Big kudos for responding to viewer critique of the last essay while maintaining your own perspective. I like the idea of weaving Fallout into your next few topics, instead of doing an entire "guess I gotta talk Fallout now" episode. If you keep doing that, braiding things together, it'll give newer viewers good reason to go back to old essays. Keep it up! Also the avocado icons rock. You can make them even easier for people who are scrubbing through the video by moving the spoiled icon to a different corner than the fresh icon.
As someone who watched Glee for the first time in 2022, at age 22, and really enjoyed the first three seasons, I would LOVE to see the Door Monster Glee Was Good video.
I never thought of drama and mystery it this way, but I'm glad you explained it as such. Mostly because I just watched a really terrible review of one of my favorite books where the reviewer explains that "the book is bad because it tells you who the betrayer is right out of the gate." They complained that it was "far too telly" and that you need to "show not tell." The book is Dune by the way.
"Recontextualization", yes, thank you! It's exactly what I'm trying to do with my first story, and I've struggled to put it into words. Now I have one word, a perfect explanation/definition, and an example to give/think of (Sixth Sense).
The funny thing is, for the longest time, I thought I *did* know the twist for the Sixth Sense, so I never watched it. Turns out “I see dead people” was not it.
Fallout is fun the first time through imo, but actually thinking about the story under any practical lens reveals it has more plot holes than swiss cheese. Like why did Moldaver's men try to kill Lucy if her plan the whole time was for her to bring her the cold fusion?
It’s not fun for someone that actually understands the lore tho. It was pain trying not to break into a rant in front of my family over how terrible it is.
@@Wesley-1776 It's honestly so true. I'm not personally like a super Fallout lore buff, but especially with shady sands being blown up (which to be clear was totally written to have happened before new vegas and was only retconned later) it just feels like the writers didn't even try to stay with the lore.
@@tright6 … Holy shit… A wild person that understands this!!! I swear no one outside of Enclave Emily or Creetosises discord’s understand this. OH MY GOD YES!
Lost: There are two groups on an island, one desperately wants to get off the island, the other desperately wants them to get off the island, so naturally they start killing each other.
I'm literally about halfway through my first run-through of Lost now, so thank you for not spoiling anything for me! I'm going to hope to be done with the show by the time you make your lost video, and I will look forward to it, because every episode, I'm mad at fictional characters for being idiots who can't communicate.
Lost is incredible, you have a hell of a journey ahead of you. It's also nearly unspoilable. I could have outright told you things that happen and you'd still never see it coming.
@@DoorMonster That sounds about right! Unless you told me that a major character withholds critical information about how their world works from another character, this enabling further poor decision making. That's not unexpected, that's just par for the course at this point.
About that "Davies vs Moffat", I'd always though the consensus was that Davies excelled at long-form character arcs, while Moffat's strengths were in single episode storylines, with either being less than proficient in the opposite space
Honestly, show don't tell is the biggest travesty of modern media, I don't want to watch a three hour TH-cam video to find out what the plot is. And they're also so scared of exposition, like it's a bad thing? I hate when in shows the characters never actually tell each other anything, they just either talk off-screen about what happens to them or just don't tell each other things at all.
I think what's happening is that they're too focused on "don't tell". When the intended reading is show INSTEAD of telling where possible. And also "Show" can still be through dialogue. You can display two people disliking each other in a conversation without them going "I hate you."
That doesn't apply to the Fallout show though, all you had to know going in is that there was a war and everyone lives in vaults. The actual plot is simple, well paced and exciting. They actually rarely introduce elements to the story and don't have a use for them in the plot. I feel like Door Monster wrote the whole critique before watching the show and didn't know how to make it work after finishing it. It just doesn't fit. I don't care if he didn't like it I just don't think this criticisms are accurate or valid. There's probably ten movies or TV shows from the last 2 years that are worse offenders. In fact I think the problem is so common you could say this about most new movies and TV without having seen them and you'd have a pretty high success rate, but Fallout was well written. I expected it to be bad and it's alright and that makes me very happy. Pick any Marvel thing from the last few years and the problems he describes are way more prevalent.
There's a great example of a movie purposely ruining all the laws of mystery in a great way. "Interstate 60". At the beginning it gives you the box (literally), then during the movie it perfectly draws your attention away until you forget about the existence of the box, and then in the end of the movie it makes fun of it. Brilliant! Also, as for those, who really managed mystery - I highly recommend The Longest Journey/Dreamfall game series! There's one thing there you've been talking in this video about, but I won't reveal which one due to the avocado reasons, that game did just perfectly! And writing women, also brilliant!
One of the best instances of recontextualization I've ever seen is your D&D: The Tavern video. It would've been a perfect example had it not looked like you were patting yourself on the back.
Really loving these new videos about writing analysis - they're super fascinating to hear your breakdown of existing media and how they either hit or miss the mark.
While yeah, I love the skits and have been following for near a decade now for them, I really enjoyed hearing Kyle just talk about something he's so passionate about. As someone who plays games more than watches shows/movies, I'd love twin episodes that talks about writing in Games along these lines.
I want to listen to you talking about writing forever, its so insightful I watched dozens of hours of content on this topic and i thought my novel outline is pretty good, but turns out i couldn’t spot the mistakes that you talked about It’s eye-opening, i really hope you will continue
In a slight defence of Fallout: I think it replaces satisfying payoffs and logical consistency with something else, that is good: humor. And since it is a comedy show, the mystery being way less important or even disregarded by some characters, failing towards objectives and characters changing their stance is funny. I applaud Fallout for capturing the feel of the game, like almost no video game adaptation has before, by having characters just rolling with it. It's not always logical, but since when has anyone ever created a logical RPG character? Yes, it is not a very focused story, but it feel like the games very much. Now you can't do pointless mystery boxing with a sincere fantasy epic, talking about Rings of Power of course. What differentiates the show from Tolkiens writing the most, is that Tolkien did never hold back in flooding the reader with backstory, context, motivations and goals, almost no mystery. But still have tension and excitement, when the characters actually do the thing they are known for. It is way more satisfying to know who Annatar is and see when the characters learn it, rather than guessing who the Stranger or Halbrand are.
Counterargument: you can very easily do both. Something can be funny and satisfying. Dramatic Irony is a particularly effective vehicle for that, actually.
You left the severance tag on during the 6th sense section. Made it a touch harder to skip those spoilers. I think showing the skip to time is probably a better option… or at least something you should add because the avocado option seemed useful
5:31 But Kyle, what if I as the artist don't like large portions of my potential audience? Legitimately though, great video. Looking forward to what comes next.
I'm so glad to hear "I could make this video about X, but I don't really want to, I'd prefer to talk about Y"! Consider your interests a vetter about what is exciting/interesting for everyone, and keep doing what you find interesting!
Through the thumbnail, you promised me the Attack on Titan from the final season, yet gave me another one. Anyway, AoT's pacing is great because they are faster than other tv series. The answers to our questions about the world is given in a steady pace, and their placements are scattered through the first half of Season 1, providing just the necessary information to keep the interesting plot moving.
@@futurestoryteller I'm well aware of how mid Doctor who is lol, I haven't really watched it since I was a kid and haven't come up with a better pic yet
@@ColorlessQueen Just seems to me people who complain about the quality of modern TV in particular are either boomers with rose-tinted glasses, or little babies who don't remember a time before serialized programming became normalized. Besides there's more to watch than ever before too, even if Netflix cancels it all.
One impression I've gotten from a ton of modern streaming shows is that the writers are treating their serialized miniseries more like very long movies than... well, serialized tv shows. In the sense that the first few episodes aren't actually written as EPISODES- connected pieces of story that have their own beginning, middle and end that are meant to fit into a larger whole- but rather as the first act of a movie. Of course the Fallout show isn't hooking you in the first half of the series- that's act one! It's all about establishing shots and vibes, man! The story actually starts in act 2, a.k.a. episode five, because that's how the movie's supposed to go, y'know? ... at least that's the vibe I've gotten. Anyway, long story short, binge-shows are not how people should consume tv shows and streaming series need to stop writing their tv shows exactly like movies.
Why would you have to watch an entire series to criticize it? That's just silly. Regardless, that previous video was very clearly only about the first two episodes.
If you do the Fallout Video, please also consider it started as a game that has almost every time the same plot (find x) and the side quests and world building are the important part and not the main quest. Also if you don't have yet, play at least one game, to get the whole feeling of Fallout. 4:25 Wasn't this Trentino with the Suitcase in Pulp Fiction?
Twists in films can be fun. But I've always thought that if the movie relies solely on the twist itself, it could weaken the movie. What I mean is, I appreciate movies more for their rewatchability. Not just that first gut punch. Even once you know the twist, you should still be able to enjoy watching the film as a whole. That might be because of the setting/look of the film, effects, music, characters/acting, or the plot in general. Heck, a well setup twist with hints throughout the film then rewards a person upon a second time viewing. I'm glad he brought up the Sixth Sense. Even though everyone pretty much knows that twist now, it still is a good film to watch and appreciate the details. Not every one of Shyamalan's films work (I think the majority don't), but I definitely enjoyed watching The Village, Unbreakable, Split and The Visit. Films I knew the entire plot of BEFORE watching, but are still worth seeing, include Jaws and Alien. The shots, music and acting are great, and you can still feel that terror. Inception has so much going on, it actually clicked together much better upon a second viewing. And of course, Knives Out is a fantastically planned out murder mystery. Movies should be an experience. If reading the Wikipedia summary felt more exciting that watching the film, something went wrong.
I love this new format you've been making, and I'm waiting eagerly for more. I make games and narrative is one of my weak points so this is also hugely informative
With YOU it seems you ended up not seeing the forrest for the trees. You saw scenes that's been done before. But, has a show where you follow the psycho killer's journey and also thought process been done like this? At least for me it hadn't. Dexter was a good guy - and Walter White is a completely different character from the guy in YOU. But, for YOU the story is really about diving into the minds of someone who get's obsessed with others, to the point where he does stupid things. The show is also very good at changing up the stakes every season - with the last season being very good in my opinion. But hey, sometimes people have watched and read too much to the point where they scuff and say "It's done better before!"
You might have gotten this information already, but Chobits was actually made by an all girl mangaka (manga artist) group. Had to double check, but it was written by CLAMP, and not by PEACH-PIT, like I had originally assumed (I love Peach-Pit, so I will mention them wherever possible). Another good example of a Chobits is DearS, by Peach-Pit. Suffers many of the same, if not worse sins of writting women... still done by women.
I've been reminded that the last season of Attack on Titan is pretty mystery box-y, which I kinda forgot because it's one of those shows that I cut off early in my head - if you watch only through season 3, it's a great and fully complete narrative, like Westworld season 1, or the first three seasons of Chuck. I've added "Knowing When to End Your Story" to the list.
I was about to mention that XD
Attack on Titan's basement and also the way it handles flashbacks are so darn rough
Well anyway I'll recommend the Anime "Ranger Reject" only has one season so far but it's pretty darn entertaining
I've heard it's like The Boys but Super Sentai localization calls it "Go Go Loser Ranger"
It's about a Puddy (power ranger villain mook) on his quest for vengeance after 12 years of WWF slavery
after their bosses have already long been dealt with
Story keeps moving with very few breaks it's pretty good
anyway I enjoy these vidyas keep em up +best
Oh if you're going to talk about knowing when to end your story make sure you talk about the boys because that is repetitive dribble
Love the reviews, sorry for being a pain in the butt 😅
Like Battlestar Galactica...which should have ended the exact second Earth showed up on the screen, instead of dissapearing so far up it's own ass it turned into a wierd Mormon ouroboros.
Honestly though I feel like AOT pulls off the final season pretty well anyway - we're still watching how the characters adapt and change to the world around them, and then start watching the ramifications that THEIR decisions have on the world.
The ending is divisive, but it's not truly awful in all aspects, and spends a lot of time dissecting the different sides of a nuanced conflict that ultimately ends with a choice they all have to make to finish their narrative arks.
If anything I feel like AOT having a mystery box, (even though you mentioned the last season, let's not forget that "the basement" is a mystery box throughout all seasons 1-3) it DOESN'T suck, which means that all you have to do to make it work is understand how to keep the narrative moving at a natural rate.
As for "know when to end your show", should it have been ended after the basement was opened? Because deciding not to resolve anything just because "I've done good enough this far" is certainly a CHOICE for ending a story, but personally I wouldn't call it a good one.
So this is how this channel would look like if Kyle was never exposed to PC games.
Honestly would love it either way. I love the commentary, and i'm learning alot for writing which is cool.
At the risk of asking for a joke to be explained - can someone fill me in on this one?
@@thomasmiller8289 Admittedly I don't know much else he's done, but years ago he did these Half-Life comedy sketches. I re-watched them yesterday before watching his more recent commentary stuff and it felt like Gordon Freeman was telling me why modern writing kinda sucks.
There is a debate in the anime community between the three-episode rule, which holds that you should never judge an anime until you've watched at least three episodes of it because sometimes it can take some time to set up a premise properly, and the one-episode rule, which holds that you can tell if an anime has good animation, voice acting, and episode-per-episode pacing from a single episode whether or not you fully understand the premise by the end of that episode.
Basically no one argues that you should watch an entire 12+ episode season of an anime before judging whether or not it is worth your time, and I don't see why that's any more reasonable for a Netflix show. Showrunners have three episodes to sell the show *if the audience is feeling generous*.
What point are you trying to make in relation to the video?
@@_VesperProbably that it wasn't somehow Kyle's fault that the Fallout show didn't interest him after getting 25% of the way through the season.
@@_Vesper Kyle talks early on about how he judged the Fallout show on its first two episodes. My point is that this is fine, and even completely typical (sort of - it's the exact midpoint between the two most common positions) of a community where media longer than 2-3 hours is the norm.
@@OverlordMaldeus ah okay, yeah I think that's a fair point, though I think the real complaints people had were that he kind of "reviews" the show despite not watching most of it
So how do you judge naruto then?. I dont think three episodes would hook folk i say the first chunian exam as i tried to quit three times but everyone kept going get to that arc and it gets good, but as a friend that siad this on ff13, i ant playing a game for 30 hours till it gets good.
That "Video Games Aren't Movies" video concept is one I would watch immediately. I have SO many thoughts on games' unique toolbox as a storytelling medium, and the industry's varying amounts of success using it.
"Video games aren't movies", looking at YOU, plausibly-zionist Neil Druckmann!
Also a sub section like "Books are not Movies"
@@capiscrazy9732 the perfect example is the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, nails every single medium there is, radio show, tv show, movie, game, books
This is a big one for me. I refuse to call Last of Us a video game. I call it a TV show with DVD special features.
@@goldjaw I'm pretty critical of TLoU in this regard too. I don't even know if I'd be that harsh on it but it definitely deserves to be a focal piece of the discussion.
Who knew that a good Door Monster series would be about Kyle talking about movies and TV?
Well, Kyle did and it was a good idea. Good job, Kyle.
Thanks!
I get the feeling that Kyle bringing up Niel so often in these videos will eventually lead to them fighting each other with swords on the deck of a sinking cruise ship
District 9 is a perfect mystery. It starts with the end, with people being interviewed about what went wrong, before you even know what the 'it' that went wrong is. This means the story gives itself nowhere to escape to. The 'what' is immediately revealed, the 'how' is the mystery that is all that is left to uncover in the rest of the movie.
Kinda like columbo in a way
Yeah, that was a pretty good movie too, great build up to the big fight in the slums and Wikus' character development.
Back in a time when competent people made movies.
I was reading shadow over innsmouth recently and I loved how it "had it's cake and ate it too" in terms of mystery/subverting expectations. At the very start of the story it tells you "this entire town was arrested and its reef was blown up by the government". And the solution of the mystery is exactly what it promised, the town is evil and its reef is the source. But because it was so straightforward in the setup and payoff of that mystery, it allowed another mystery to build right under your nose, and you don't realize it's even something that needed solving until the very end when your expectations are completely subverted and it turns out our innocent narrator is descended from this evil town and is now accepting the evil into himself.
@@lr- you should watch Dagon, it's a mid budget movie of that story. Lots of fish people done up with practical effects, sticking close to the story and made with passion. You'd love it
18:12 oops, Kyle forgot to change the title from Severance. Let's help him sleep so it doesn't happen again :)
it's a good thing I have my Sleep Stick™
@@guyspy21. “Mr. Sweet Dreams 2000”.
I spent last year making my way through the whole original canon of Sherlock Holmes stories. I think on reflection one of their greatest strengths is actually the frame story they operate under that do such a great job of making promises. Nearly every single Holmes story opens with Dr. Watson briefly introducing the story you're about to read and some of its details. By the end it's all been handled; who did the crime? Why, how and how did Sherlock Holmes crack the case?
It's such a treat and was weirdly refreshing for something written about a hundred years ago
Actually, the franchise is also a perfect example of what the weird shit that eventually happened.
Becauyse BBC' Sherlock has NOTHING of it. Instead you were giving cases you could not possible solve while Sherlock always had more information than you and then uses that knowledge to explain it to you in the end.
I don't think JJ Abrams actually knows what mystery is. He cares more about making things seem mysterious than actually crafting a mystery.
Writers like Abrams just treat any information that you don't immediately have as a mystery. It doesn't matter if they actually try to hide the information or if the characters have to investigate or if a character tries to mislead people about their motivations. If a new character is introduced and they don't immediately tell you who they are, it's treated as a mystery even if the character tells their life story the very next episode.
A good mystery has the chance of being solved by the audience ahead of time using clues littered throughout the story. Hard for Abrams to do when he makes a mystery box and then forgets to put anything in it.
it's what i would call suspense. it can be used to drive scenes or moments, but it shouldn't be one of the big motivators the audience has to keep watching, you run the risk of making the media seem retrospectivley hollow. the thriller genre is basically nothing more than interplay between small moments of suspense and larger mysteries.
@@crediblesalamander8056but suspense require tension. Abrams will try to make basic information mysterious and dramatic and it doesn't really have much of an effect on the story or characters.
I readied my metaphorical hand holding a rock aimed for your head,
before it occured to me that i'm being quite the fanboy; which i hate. and that you raise some good points
then again; he helped made FRINGE and (s1) westworld. which are absolute gems
therefore, i am hereby throwing metaphorical rocks at your face!! xD
literaly what his mystery box writing is all about.
The reason to watch "YOU" that had me hooked, is the inevitable moment where she finds out hes fucking insane.
It's pretty obvious the writing isn't always great, but yeah, it has a clear theme and is a fun show in its own way.
Incel show?
@@AC-hj9tv nah he’s just a psychopath
@@theendofthestart8179 oh ok
I know a few so I'm good lol
I couldn’t with YOU the poor kid neighbor trying to study while his mom phucked the abusive boyfriend so loudly you could hear them in the corridor broke me. Too close to my own childhood I just couldn’t keep watching. Borderline parents are a trip.
If you're gonna do an episode about "Games aren't movies" you gotta talk about Heavy Rain and Detroit: Become Human.
Games are movies.
Objectively
🗿
But that would mean having to talk about the David Cage. And no one should ever have to talk about David Cage.
@@futurestorytellerthat movie about the game Battleship comes to mind, but I can't remember what it was called...
@@futurestoryteller If you're a pedantic fuck, then yes, by the standards of the early 1900's, videogames would fall under the category "movies", because it has moving pictures.
Of course, such a category would also include flipbooks, regardless of whether they are being recorded and put on a screen. I'm pretty sure you don't call flipbooks movies.
Of course, I can also very equally be a pedantic fuck, and claim that by SEVERAL definitions, videogames in fact AREN'T movies. Because some definitions are updates. Some of them include the default "passivity" of a movie watcher. Some of them aren't even definitions in the classical sense of the word, and are really just large umbrella descriptions, just like how our ACTUAL understanding of "movie" works. (Definitions are, mostly, useless in any language. They are there to have some sort of common ground, but are RARELY ever truly used in any practical sense. Language works via pattern recognition and descriptions with a general consensus on the most used phrasing and terminology.)
And lastly, I'll out-pedantic-fuck you. Because you stated "games are movies" "objectively".
They in fact are not. VIDEOgames might be, by your ancient standard. But not "games". A boardgame is a game. Football is a game. None of these are movies. Therefore, your pedantry was not pedantic enough by your own "objective" standards.
Now be quiet and let the grown people talk.
In this spectrum there's also the columbo format ("howcatchem" or "inverted detective story"), where you start with a crime getting comitted and are then asked how the detective will solve it (other examples are Poker Face and Furuhata Ninzaburō), this provides a weird balance between mystery and drama, as with the context of the murder itself any clue will already be significant to us when we learn about it giving the drama of the detective interacting with the killer and figuring out how to prove he is the killer and the relevant cat and mouse
like, second episode of Furuhata Ninzaburo, [spoilers it's good, go watch it] Furuhata pulls the trick of making the killer hide something that he convinces the killer is evidence, but without telling the audience explicitly, this gives us the mystery of what each character knows while also giving the drama of Furuhara playing dumb while the killer somewhat clumsily tries to hide the evidence with him in the room
Yeah, those are pretty great.
I definitely like stories where the writers don't feel any pressure to keep "the twist" from the audience. Stories that are desperate to keep a secret can often fall into the trap of doing really dumb things to keep the secret going, but stories that don't care are free to explore the consequences of that twist much better.
Detective Conan is also a good example of crime first investigation after
some ace attorney cases do this but it still works really well because instead of trying to figure out who did it you are trying to figure out how to prove it
As an indie writer I am so in for the Kyle Media Analysis Arc
What do you write
@@AC-hj9tv gay stuff for trans people. It's pretty fun.
@@PrincessFelicie let's get it!!
Thank you for giving me a word to explain why I like AOT's story other than suspense and action.
It's insane how some characters which would later be important were hiding in plain sight and you never notice that unless you have a keen eye. I personally was so absorbed in the ongoing plot (and reading subtitles tbh) that it was impossible for me to notice how certain characters react ever so slightly different to the events happening in front of them.
AoT is a really, really good example of the writer having everything planned from the beginning, and the cool stuff you can do when you have those plans already in place. Ironically, One Piece is also like that, it just also is bogged down with hundreds of episodes of filler and glacially slow pacing.
@@moon_wizard1250 Attack on titan is story-telling at it's most efficient, with some minor drawbacks here and there.
One piece is the exact opposite. It's not really a story, but it pretends to be one. It's an addiction for those that are too stupid to turn off the show after 10 episodes. It's 99.99% filler, and the remaining 0.01 percent builds up to something. And then the writer can pretend he has got something planned.
It's like having a bottle filled almost to the brink with oil and filling the last tiny bubble of air with water. You can pretend it's a bottle of water all you like, but you'd be wrong. It's a bottle of oil with a slight hint of water in it. That's one-piece.
As someone who's been getting in to writing recently, my favourite line in any movie is "If she would only believe, the thief would be able to fly through the air, and even drain a lake of its water", from Castle of Cagliostro.
It's classic Chekov's Gun. Even further back, it's a classic line of prophecy from folklore or mythology. That's how you hook an audience.
Sort of the opposite problem of this is when a tv show has a solid, well structured mystery arc that gets nicely resolved over the first season, and then you have to figure out what the hell to do now. See Veronica Mars and Altered Carbon.
I feel like it's perfectly fine to make one solid, well structured season of a show.
Of course if something is successful people no doubt want it to be made forever until it stops making money but in an ideal world shows could end when they're done.
Ideally, they just write a completely new mystery that works just as well.
I'd add heroes to that list too
@@RAFMnBgaming
It's the "but then money happened" syndrome.
@@Carrotspy
That may work, but you can't have too much, because all of that has to happen in the same universe with the same rules and same characters.
Like when you introduce a new powerful character at the 5th mystery, then you have to explain where he/she was during the first 4. Or the other way around, a gadget the heroes use to solve the first one can get really inconvenient for all of the upcoming ones.
And it gets weird when a group of normal people has to save the world every week from unrelated threats. May work with superheroes, but even then you have the issue of a new bad buy popping into existence every week.
There are ways to deal with these issues, but it requires careful planning and a lot of discipline from the writers. Babylon 5 did a great job with this, almost all threats are foreshadowed from the start, and interact with each other in the background.
I am FULLY game if you turn this channel into Overly Sarcastic Production's cousin.
Red and Kyle would work great together! A rivals to friends Trope kind of thing if I ever saw it.
@@phoenixrising1992 The dynamic between Blue and Kyle remind me of that video that Tomska and Tom Scott made, like they are both very nerdy but they carry themselves very differently.
@@phoenixrising1992 Deadpan vs sarcasm. Would be an interesting mix
Now You See Me is interesting because when you watch it, it's really fun! Tons of spectacle! It's a thrill from start to finish! And then you look back on it and go "hey wait a minute absolutely none of these characters had anything resembling a character arc, or gave us any reason to be invested in them whatsoever".
spectacle enjoyment, the story itself was a magic trick, in that there seemed to be a story but there wasnt.
That movie still makes me mad just because of how smug the ending feels. It felt like the writer's were patting themselves on the back for their brilliant "magic trick," when there was no way for anyone to actually figure out the twist without some serious leaps of logic. It's not misdirection if there's nowhere else to go!
@1ManRandom a magic trick isn't supposed to be figured out
@@yellowmaster52 But that's the thing. The movie DIDN'T feel like a magic trick. It felt like a 'prank gone wrong' kinda trick.
To me it was mostly because none of the magic felt like magic tricks. They felt like CGI shortcuts. If the movie was done with completely practical effects or real stage magic the effect would've been amazing.
The 'mastermind' behind it all was still a cheap trick and unbelievable.
Just like a magic trick, they make you pay attention to other stuff so that a mediocre script with no meaning can pass right in front of you without you noticing it
I have been wanting a "Do Not Ascribe Agency to the Polyhedron" shirt for a very long time now... Must acquire.
That's what the Polyhedron wants you to think.
The polyhedron is a filthy cheater and you should never believe it's lies.
@@andrasbiro3007 please do not ascribe agency to the polyhedron. the polyhedron does not want anything.
If you haven't, try Invincible. I won't spoil, of course, but the main mystery has its SOLUTION revealed at the very beginning. The rest of the season is built around discovering the MOTIVE. A very fun mystery in my opinion.
"Even if your friend's story is just something as simple as 'I'm mad at my dad' or 'I started an OnlyFans'"
Why did you list the same story twice?
Hey, maybe you can start an Onlyfans if your dad is dead! You don't know.
Nice outdated joke, but it would actually work if it was like “I need to pay rent”. The daddy issues bit is stale
I really appreciate the time you put into making these videos. I love mid-length opinion pieces like this - where someone experienced in a field comments on that field as an expert, and admits humility even in their expert opinion. Just the way you present and speak glues me to the video, to keep listening until the end just to see what next inventive idiom you come up with. Keep rocking, dude.
Btw, on the sixth sense part of the video, the samll text on teh bottom left says Severence
Yeah, first it says Severance(1999) then Severance(2022), both for Sixth Sense. Oops. Shame TH-cam doesn't allow for edits to already uploaded videos.
NBD, of course, really just commenting because I saw it too and I felt like doing the engagement thing.
I think it's totally fair to say "I stopped watching because it didn't get my attention."
It's "fair" to say "I stopped watching" for literally any reason because you have no obligation to watch. That doesn't mean the actual reason is having the disciplined focus of a methed-out trailer park squirrel.
@@futurestorytellerIf it fails to retain the audience's attention, then it has failed at telling an interesting story.
@@Prespanda You're an individual. Not the audience.
@@futurestoryteller Do you need a crowd of people to give you the same answer before you get the point?
@@Prespanda No. I need you to behave and think like an adult.
4:05 I think in case of Fallout the answer would be "Dude! That's Fallout! What do you think would happen in a show based on Fallout? Just watch! I promise - that's Fallout!". I'm not trying to defend this mentality - all I'm saying is that in this case the writers and showrunners think that the name alone should hook the audience and they can get away with "I woke up, brushed my teeth and went to work, listening to that annoying song IN A FALLOUT UNIVERSE!"
Maybe that's enough for some shows. I mean, I will boot up Fallout and just go wandering around aimlessly for a few hours and consider that a fun evening. I just like being in the Fallout universe. And there's millions of people like that. You can have a successful show without solving a mystery or having a point. The good part of Avatar was just existing in Pandoran culture and it was really, really good.
I think this whole criticism is weirdly applied here. The show gives you quite a bit of what's going on. Lucy's dad knows of Moldaver, someone coming from the surface who for some reason kidnaps him. You are also shown that her mother is supposedly dead since she was little yet Moldaver knows her. The premise is quite literally "Lucy is going to find her dad, Maximus is going to rise in the Brotherhood, and the Ghoul will chase his bounty" and all of that comes to fruition. Aang defeats Ozai but you aren't shown how. Romeo and Juliet die but the circumstances are complex and not given immediately.
@@excalibur2772it seems like somebody who went into the show with a preconceived critique trying to force it to fit even though it doesn't.
Like this is just a critique of Lost applied to a different show but none of the problems of Lost are presented here.
By the last episode of the season the 2 out of every 3 plots are resolved and obviously as a streaming show they'd want to leave it open ended for season 2.
Loads of my friends who never played a fallout game said it was great, so I know I'm not just fanning over a fallout product like i have been known to do.
I don't love the twist in the last couple episodes about the cold fusion macguffin but we got a resolution to multiple arcs, particularly Lucy's plot to try to figure out what happened to her vault.
@@SineN0mine3 Too bad the show openly contradicts the lore on so many places, while also openly contradicting what it itself had established not a few episodes ago. Or it actively rettcons it's own rettcons. But fanboys were too busy gawking at the plastic cgi effects and all the references they could make a tally of they didn't notice.
It's a mediocre enough show for a person with a functional brain. It's a straight up bad show for a person with a functional brain and active knowledge of the fallout universe.
Love this new format, need more essays!
8:24 That genius psycho would never get past my horrible suspicion that someone is hiding behind every closed shower curtain I've ever seen
12:35 While you're right that there's a lot of poorly written women in anime, you can't really use Chobits as an example, because the author was trying to write a robot with 0 memories learning about the world and gaining sentience.
They didn't do a great job with that (from what I remember), but they clearly weren't trying to write woman like you seem to be referring to.
Still worth a video topic, I just don't think that particular show is a useful example for such a discussion.
Yeah, and I'd point out anime is an entire medium with shows aimed at a lot of different demographics, it'd be silly to be put off from watching Western movies altogether because there were some sex comedies aimed at teen boys like American Pie a generation ago that were horny in ways you find uncomfortable, it's just as silly to be put off from anime over the same kind of thing.
But the female characters in Chobits and shows like still dominate anime as a whole. I could see if 75% of the US film industry featured characters like the ones in American Pie even if they were aimed at adults but that’s not true. Even anime and manga aimed at women have this problem. The misogyny specific to Anime is off putting not just because it’s foreign to western viewers but because it’s so incredibly widespread and baked into so much of it.
I thought the same exact thing when that clip showed up.
If you're gonna make this point about anime in general you can find many other clips that can better illustrate it
@@Sugarspicekanekalon "American Pie" would still be an example of a woman, but Chobits is mainly about a robot. The way you'd write them is inherently different, as the author wasn't trying to write a female character, instead it was more like a naive robot child learning about the world.
This point vexes me. Are we asserting by contrast that men are well written in most anime?
Why weren’t you doing video essays before? You’re really good at this.
I've been on the door monster train for many years now, and it's always been a fun if somewhat sporadic ride. I am so here for Kyle does video essays about media, but with door monster brand funny slathered all over it, I don't even have the words to express it. This is already my favorite thing you have ever done, and you've done so many of my favorite things. Keep it up man, fan for life!
You are good at this.
Kyle explains writing.
Perun explains war economics.
Scholagladiatoria explains swords.
Drachinifel explains ships.
Soon I'll be able to write a pirate story! Or become a pirate. Still deciding...
So 4 way collaboration to explain Master and Commander?
@@HALLish-jl5mo I would watch the shit out of this
@@matthobbs5203 I would love an annual Perun video on fictional wars. First video of April or something.
Good taste
I just couldn't get through the first episodes of Attack on Titan once I noticed that the main characters literally shout in every single scene.
Yeah, the main character for me was annoying to watch, so I gave up after the first season.
were u watching the dub by any chance
I recently rewatched Shutter Island and that does recontextualization incredibly well. So well in fact that many people who watch it don't believe the twist actually happened. The strength in that one is the plot lays out so plausibly but not predictably that you still get twists in the story as the horror of what you believe happens is laid out. Then the twist comes and suddenly everything makes so much more sense.
Hero is an interesting exercise in recontextualization. It keeps flipping its motivations around events so the ending feels like a coin toss but the tales are entrancing.
The twist is made so good that the first time i watched i found it cheap and kinda hated it.
But then i watched it again only because my family wanted to watch, and knowing the ending made me notice all the little details and inconsistencies that were there from the start, but my mind simply ignored on the first watch
It's actually pretty surreal finding anybody who didn't know the twist ahead of time. When the film came out most people figured it out from the trailers. Some people who read the book figured it out in the middle - which is an experience a lot of people have with the movie. So it felt like an utter rarity at the time for anyone to be blown away by the twist, instead of just the filmmaking.
Hehehe my suggestion is on top of the list, not sure why but that makes me smile
"Lost" So am I buddy. Smoke? bears? time travel? All a dream
Lost: There's a plane crash bad enough the plane is broken apart, yet everyone falls neatly into (many) walks away or instantly dead, no worrying injury. There's a smoke monster, but that's just never gonna matter. Forget about all that and watch these idiots torture each other for no reason at all since what should bother them never does.
Okay, my memory of the thing is a bit vague. Maybe that's part of the problem.
@@0LoneTech Nope, am currently rewatching it for this very reason and I can tell you your recollection makes more sense than the actual show. If I was tasked to write the ending that explains all of the mysteries in Lost I think my brain might actually explode. I have never seen a show that unexplainable before, nor will I for the rest of my life. I know, because some magic numbers told me.
@@mrmcawesome9746
My plot summary is this : There are two groups on an island, one desperately wants to get off the island, the other desperately wants them to get off the island, so naturally they start killing each other.
Does anybody literally still believe the ending proves that nothing was real?
@@andrasbiro3007 I don't know what angle you're coming at this from, but by my recollection the end reveals two oppositional forces, one that wants to keep people there (or, one person at least), and another that wants them to leave
Honestly from what i learned about Kyle from this video is that he would probably enjoy the Warhammer 40k Ciaphas Cain Book series, although with him being way more into the writing scene than i am there could be cripes that he has that go way over my head. (if he ready this i recomend listening to them as an audiobook)
"Allison and I scream once a week."
I realized that you probably said "stream," but for a few seconds I was musing over your eccentricity.
I feel like a really good recent example of the "mystery box" style of show being done really well is the anime "Heavenly Delusions" because it presents with you with a mystery box and the show does a very good job of having you find out a little more of what's inside of it each episode. It's been one of my favorite mystery shows recently.
Wow, I'm really enjoying this new content. It's fun, relatable, and refreshing to see someone not just SAY that modern stories aren't as good as they were before, but actually EXPLAIN why in an entertaining format from an educated perspective.
Professor Kyle is the best Kyle. I could listen to a Jenny Nicholson Length vid of Kyle talking about this stuff. Go man go!
we gotta email him a giant porg post-haste.
You are not the only one, I watched the first two episodes of fallout and thought it was ok, wasn't really interested in watching more but thought I would give it another go and really enjoyed the show. There is something about those first two episodes that fails to capture the imagination and I think you explained it well last time by having a lack of impact of any of the decisions and no real consequences. It doesn't attach you to any of the characters or ground you in the universe. But then it gets so much better as the consequences become real and you learn way more.
I have it the One Punch Man treatment. The first episode of OP man is not actually hooking and didn’t get me, but I gave it a second episode and that one was where the REAL hook begins.
I also felt that the first two episodes of Fallout weren’t interesting, but the later stuff became more intriguing.
@@LordDaretIt's almost like they paced the show that way to avoid people who weren't invested in the show from spoiling it online. I think it worked.
That list that keeps getting updated is a very humorous through-line, while also presenting an intriguing invitation for what will happen in further episodes.
The circling "Writing Women" bit had me in tears. XD
These next few videos are all gonna be bangers I can tell, keep this content comin'!
I just saw "Now You See Me" less than a week ago, and I think there was one aspect that foreshadowed the twist: that the detective was hilariously bad at his job. He got duped by illusions time after time, did not recognize when his own tracker was pickpocketed onto him, and even continued to lead other detectives astray when he should have had more experience with the magicians. I am not defending it, to be clear. It's the same issue I have with Nia in Xenoblade 2 (I know that is the hottest take I have, I think that she is a good character that is overrated, not a bad character). You can decide to recontextualize everything later, but if it's not enjoyable before the new context, then it's still an overall bad story because your first watch is without the context.
Kyle talking writing and tropes is startling entertaining. Please keep this going!
My favourite thing about the Fallout show is that my friend said "There's a big question about who exactly dropped the bombs" and my immediate reaction without thinking was "We already know that, it was the Zebras." And I realized that I have read WAY TOO MUCH MY LITTLE PONY FANFICTION
The best part is that I was actually wrong in an interesting way... Which I'm not going to spoil unless someone asks lol
Don’t the games cover that? I forget if there’s an actual answer or it’s “What? Who cares? Look at the state of everything! It still happened, it doesn’t matter who did it!”
The show YOU definitely becomes both of the things you mentioned even just late in the first season(though the next seasons really make the characters a lot better and the predicaments a lot more interesting). The end game of the main character does become a tangible thing, concerned primarily with dealing with the consequences of the first season while also doing the same thing that got him into trouble all over again. I admit the first season isn't the best(and especially the first couple episodes), but it really picks up.
7:21 a great recent example of a promise you can't keep was from Doctor Who.
in the generation where the doctor was a woman, there was a long plot arc about the doctor's true identity, and when it finally came time to reveal it to the audience, the answer was literally "does it even matter?"
Actually, that's not a promise that couldn't be kept, just a promise that wasn't.
I love mfs who don't/haven't experienced much of a thing voicing a very strong opinion about those things for 25 minutes, especially when his takes on the things I am familiar with are over a decade out of date.
I think recontextualization handled masterfully was why I enjoyed Tunic so much. I played it in like 5 2-hour sessions, and at the end of each one, I had to look at all the information I thought I had about the world so far differently. It's an amazing game if you haven't played it!
Tunic has so many "wait, you mean I could have done that the whole time?" moments and they work so well
Big kudos for responding to viewer critique of the last essay while maintaining your own perspective. I like the idea of weaving Fallout into your next few topics, instead of doing an entire "guess I gotta talk Fallout now" episode. If you keep doing that, braiding things together, it'll give newer viewers good reason to go back to old essays. Keep it up!
Also the avocado icons rock. You can make them even easier for people who are scrubbing through the video by moving the spoiled icon to a different corner than the fresh icon.
As someone who watched Glee for the first time in 2022, at age 22, and really enjoyed the first three seasons, I would LOVE to see the Door Monster Glee Was Good video.
I never thought of drama and mystery it this way, but I'm glad you explained it as such. Mostly because I just watched a really terrible review of one of my favorite books where the reviewer explains that "the book is bad because it tells you who the betrayer is right out of the gate." They complained that it was "far too telly" and that you need to "show not tell." The book is Dune by the way.
Lord, who the hell made that review? I need to know so i can avoid them.
"Recontextualization", yes, thank you!
It's exactly what I'm trying to do with my first story, and I've struggled to put it into words.
Now I have one word, a perfect explanation/definition, and an example to give/think of (Sixth Sense).
The funny thing is, for the longest time, I thought I *did* know the twist for the Sixth Sense, so I never watched it. Turns out “I see dead people” was not it.
Fallout is fun the first time through imo, but actually thinking about the story under any practical lens reveals it has more plot holes than swiss cheese. Like why did Moldaver's men try to kill Lucy if her plan the whole time was for her to bring her the cold fusion?
That wasn't her plan. Ma June was supposed to bring Wilzig to Moldaver, the Ghoul interrupted that plan.
@@bjiornbjiorn yh, Lucy stumbled into that Quest by accident, there certainly are plotholes in Fallout, but this ain't one.
It’s not fun for someone that actually understands the lore tho. It was pain trying not to break into a rant in front of my family over how terrible it is.
@@Wesley-1776 It's honestly so true. I'm not personally like a super Fallout lore buff, but especially with shady sands being blown up (which to be clear was totally written to have happened before new vegas and was only retconned later) it just feels like the writers didn't even try to stay with the lore.
@@tright6 …
Holy shit…
A wild person that understands this!!!
I swear no one outside of Enclave Emily or Creetosises discord’s understand this. OH MY GOD YES!
Lost: There are two groups on an island, one desperately wants to get off the island, the other desperately wants them to get off the island, so naturally they start killing each other.
I'm literally about halfway through my first run-through of Lost now, so thank you for not spoiling anything for me! I'm going to hope to be done with the show by the time you make your lost video, and I will look forward to it, because every episode, I'm mad at fictional characters for being idiots who can't communicate.
Lost is incredible, you have a hell of a journey ahead of you. It's also nearly unspoilable. I could have outright told you things that happen and you'd still never see it coming.
@@DoorMonster That sounds about right! Unless you told me that a major character withholds critical information about how their world works from another character, this enabling further poor decision making. That's not unexpected, that's just par for the course at this point.
About that "Davies vs Moffat", I'd always though the consensus was that Davies excelled at long-form character arcs, while Moffat's strengths were in single episode storylines, with either being less than proficient in the opposite space
3:23 "It's physics, and it should be satisfying"
Summed up Aristotle's concept of "catharsis" in 7.5 words.
Honestly, show don't tell is the biggest travesty of modern media, I don't want to watch a three hour TH-cam video to find out what the plot is. And they're also so scared of exposition, like it's a bad thing? I hate when in shows the characters never actually tell each other anything, they just either talk off-screen about what happens to them or just don't tell each other things at all.
I think what's happening is that they're too focused on "don't tell". When the intended reading is show INSTEAD of telling where possible. And also "Show" can still be through dialogue. You can display two people disliking each other in a conversation without them going "I hate you."
That doesn't apply to the Fallout show though, all you had to know going in is that there was a war and everyone lives in vaults. The actual plot is simple, well paced and exciting.
They actually rarely introduce elements to the story and don't have a use for them in the plot.
I feel like Door Monster wrote the whole critique before watching the show and didn't know how to make it work after finishing it.
It just doesn't fit.
I don't care if he didn't like it I just don't think this criticisms are accurate or valid. There's probably ten movies or TV shows from the last 2 years that are worse offenders.
In fact I think the problem is so common you could say this about most new movies and TV without having seen them and you'd have a pretty high success rate, but Fallout was well written. I expected it to be bad and it's alright and that makes me very happy.
Pick any Marvel thing from the last few years and the problems he describes are way more prevalent.
i watch a lot of "movie talk" on youtube, and you are very entertaining! please do more!
On one hand, Kyle has a valid point. On the other hand, it turns out that punisher skit about him being a half measure was pretty accurate
one of the best spoiler warnings ive ever seen. bravo
There's a great example of a movie purposely ruining all the laws of mystery in a great way. "Interstate 60". At the beginning it gives you the box (literally), then during the movie it perfectly draws your attention away until you forget about the existence of the box, and then in the end of the movie it makes fun of it. Brilliant!
Also, as for those, who really managed mystery - I highly recommend The Longest Journey/Dreamfall game series! There's one thing there you've been talking in this video about, but I won't reveal which one due to the avocado reasons, that game did just perfectly! And writing women, also brilliant!
Ah yes, The Sixth Severance, 1999-2022.
(The in-video clip labels go wonky during the Sixth Sense segment.)
Thank you for finishing Fallout, your critiques of it this time are much better!
his critique of it original was fine. like if it take you 5 hours to hook the audience .. there an issue
One of the best instances of recontextualization I've ever seen is your D&D: The Tavern video. It would've been a perfect example had it not looked like you were patting yourself on the back.
So true! :)
Really loving these new videos about writing analysis - they're super fascinating to hear your breakdown of existing media and how they either hit or miss the mark.
Kyle, you can just stop rolling your saves if you want to sleep.
I don't agree with you on some of your conclusions but they are super entertaining and gives me a different way to look at certain topics.
Keep it up!
The 'LOST' cutaway was very funny
Absolutely love these writing styles/ Cinema breakdowns. I'm sharing this with a couple of friends of mine and keep them coming!
19:04 thats my favorite scene from severance (2022)
While yeah, I love the skits and have been following for near a decade now for them, I really enjoyed hearing Kyle just talk about something he's so passionate about.
As someone who plays games more than watches shows/movies, I'd love twin episodes that talks about writing in Games along these lines.
Please keep making these. The skits were fun but this seems... important? Critical even? More substantive! Let's go with that.
I want to listen to you talking about writing forever, its so insightful
I watched dozens of hours of content on this topic and i thought my novel outline is pretty good, but turns out i couldn’t spot the mistakes that you talked about
It’s eye-opening, i really hope you will continue
Keep it up. These are great.
Loving this series of videos. You've got a really good perspective on writing and media so it's great to listen to.
In a slight defence of Fallout: I think it replaces satisfying payoffs and logical consistency with something else, that is good: humor. And since it is a comedy show, the mystery being way less important or even disregarded by some characters, failing towards objectives and characters changing their stance is funny. I applaud Fallout for capturing the feel of the game, like almost no video game adaptation has before, by having characters just rolling with it. It's not always logical, but since when has anyone ever created a logical RPG character?
Yes, it is not a very focused story, but it feel like the games very much.
Now you can't do pointless mystery boxing with a sincere fantasy epic, talking about Rings of Power of course. What differentiates the show from Tolkiens writing the most, is that Tolkien did never hold back in flooding the reader with backstory, context, motivations and goals, almost no mystery. But still have tension and excitement, when the characters actually do the thing they are known for. It is way more satisfying to know who Annatar is and see when the characters learn it, rather than guessing who the Stranger or Halbrand are.
Counterargument: you can very easily do both. Something can be funny and satisfying. Dramatic Irony is a particularly effective vehicle for that, actually.
Close enough. Welcome back over sarcastic productions
You left the severance tag on during the 6th sense section. Made it a touch harder to skip those spoilers.
I think showing the skip to time is probably a better option… or at least something you should add because the avocado option seemed useful
5:31 But Kyle, what if I as the artist don't like large portions of my potential audience? Legitimately though, great video. Looking forward to what comes next.
I'm so glad to hear "I could make this video about X, but I don't really want to, I'd prefer to talk about Y"!
Consider your interests a vetter about what is exciting/interesting for everyone, and keep doing what you find interesting!
Through the thumbnail, you promised me the Attack on Titan from the final season, yet gave me another one.
Anyway, AoT's pacing is great because they are faster than other tv series. The answers to our questions about the world is given in a steady pace, and their placements are scattered through the first half of Season 1, providing just the necessary information to keep the interesting plot moving.
It's frustrating that the state of media is so awful mediocre and/or okay shows, movies, games etc. are treated like the greatest thing ever released
You say this with a Tardis icon?
@@futurestoryteller I'm well aware of how mid Doctor who is lol, I haven't really watched it since I was a kid and haven't come up with a better pic yet
@@ColorlessQueen Just seems to me people who complain about the quality of modern TV in particular are either boomers with rose-tinted glasses, or little babies who don't remember a time before serialized programming became normalized. Besides there's more to watch than ever before too, even if Netflix cancels it all.
Kyle putting everything he says to work with that list of his is probably the best part of the video.
Can we talk about how well the suit/hoodie combo works?
I think it's only because of the v-neck tee.
One impression I've gotten from a ton of modern streaming shows is that the writers are treating their serialized miniseries more like very long movies than... well, serialized tv shows. In the sense that the first few episodes aren't actually written as EPISODES- connected pieces of story that have their own beginning, middle and end that are meant to fit into a larger whole- but rather as the first act of a movie. Of course the Fallout show isn't hooking you in the first half of the series- that's act one! It's all about establishing shots and vibes, man! The story actually starts in act 2, a.k.a. episode five, because that's how the movie's supposed to go, y'know?
... at least that's the vibe I've gotten. Anyway, long story short, binge-shows are not how people should consume tv shows and streaming series need to stop writing their tv shows exactly like movies.
Why would you have to watch an entire series to criticize it? That's just silly. Regardless, that previous video was very clearly only about the first two episodes.
And now I'm listening to a guy I always knew as a funny skit artist talk about writing.
If you do the Fallout Video, please also consider it started as a game that has almost every time the same plot (find x) and the side quests and world building are the important part and not the main quest. Also if you don't have yet, play at least one game, to get the whole feeling of Fallout.
4:25 Wasn't this Trentino with the Suitcase in Pulp Fiction?
I like the list bit.
I eagerly anticipate only 10% of it ever getting made.
I'm loving these writing tip videos, they're very entertaining and helpful. Helps me to make write a little bit better.
Twists in films can be fun. But I've always thought that if the movie relies solely on the twist itself, it could weaken the movie. What I mean is, I appreciate movies more for their rewatchability. Not just that first gut punch.
Even once you know the twist, you should still be able to enjoy watching the film as a whole. That might be because of the setting/look of the film, effects, music, characters/acting, or the plot in general. Heck, a well setup twist with hints throughout the film then rewards a person upon a second time viewing.
I'm glad he brought up the Sixth Sense. Even though everyone pretty much knows that twist now, it still is a good film to watch and appreciate the details. Not every one of Shyamalan's films work (I think the majority don't), but I definitely enjoyed watching The Village, Unbreakable, Split and The Visit.
Films I knew the entire plot of BEFORE watching, but are still worth seeing, include Jaws and Alien. The shots, music and acting are great, and you can still feel that terror.
Inception has so much going on, it actually clicked together much better upon a second viewing. And of course, Knives Out is a fantastically planned out murder mystery.
Movies should be an experience. If reading the Wikipedia summary felt more exciting that watching the film, something went wrong.
I love this new format you've been making, and I'm waiting eagerly for more. I make games and narrative is one of my weak points so this is also hugely informative
With YOU it seems you ended up not seeing the forrest for the trees. You saw scenes that's been done before. But, has a show where you follow the psycho killer's journey and also thought process been done like this?
At least for me it hadn't.
Dexter was a good guy - and Walter White is a completely different character from the guy in YOU.
But, for YOU the story is really about diving into the minds of someone who get's obsessed with others, to the point where he does stupid things.
The show is also very good at changing up the stakes every season - with the last season being very good in my opinion.
But hey, sometimes people have watched and read too much to the point where they scuff and say "It's done better before!"
See, Kyle drinking the giant jug of water in the first video wasn't just a gag, it was setup for him needing to pee in the next episode!
You might have gotten this information already, but Chobits was actually made by an all girl mangaka (manga artist) group. Had to double check, but it was written by CLAMP, and not by PEACH-PIT, like I had originally assumed (I love Peach-Pit, so I will mention them wherever possible). Another good example of a Chobits is DearS, by Peach-Pit. Suffers many of the same, if not worse sins of writting women... still done by women.