DoN’t ChAnGe ThE RuLes, ThAt’S JuSt HoW iT is!
Why can’t I have anything nice 
My policy position remains: MURDERTHEGODSANDTOPPLETHEIRTHRONES
Reject balance and status quo cosmology.
Come prepared.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
I…. What?
WE STAN A WHEEL SMASHING
QUEENKING
Hell yeah another KSBD fan
not ashamed to say Maya from the funny demon webcomic has become one of my favorite characters in fictionMaya and White Chain are freakin awesome, also love Allison as one of the best isekai characters in fiction so far
It does end with the world being significantly changed by the protaganists for what its worth. Imo the ending isn’t the best part of the manga, but its fine. Nothing amazing, but nothing that unpredictable or transformative.
But you should keep reading because the best parts of the manga are the character interactions and they are consistently great
put my feelings I have about a lot of media into words. TyIt’s one of my least favourite tropes.
Yup especially the Watchmen show,
spoiler
my only big gripe with the Watchmen HBO show was that Lady Trieu was le eveel big bad all along and has god delusions!!! Like her turning a room of racist power hungry KKK league of doom wannabees into jelly was fucking awesome
GOOD article.
Yeah, I had pretty much the same reaction somewhere around that point too. The Demon and its attendant theme of “the most dAnGeROuS wishes aren’t self serving and cruel ones, but a desire to improve things and help others” are 100% the worst part of the worldbuilding and in fact are so bad that they kind of retroactively ruin all the cool ideas that came before imo.
That deeply hurts my love of the show, especially knowing this is coming up in it.
I hate status quo sophistry so much.
I don’t want to rail against something that people enjoy the way they enjoy Dungeon Meshi especially since the early parts are so good and charming, but goddamn if it didn’t do two things that really sour it for me. The revelation about the Demon and the whole cosmology of the setting are one, and the other was pretty early on with the Falin storyline when
(spoiler for the show up through episode 13 or so and also this is just me ranting about a specific general narrative device that annoys me and not something super specific to Dungeon Menshi except that it did it and I found it annoying)
they just hit a narrative tension reset button by raising her before it’s too late and then immediately taking her away again but in a way that was no longer super urgently pressing. I hate that narrative device so much, like “oh you’ve accomplished [narrative objective], congratulations! Time to undo the completion of [narrative objective] and restore the plot to the point of still wanting [same narrative objective]!” because it’s just like why? It feels so pointless to have a story shift from having a goal to pretending to advance and then just saying “psych!” and still being in the same place, and while it’s not like that’s a super common narrative device it does pop up from time to time and I always hate it.
One should never segue from where one is at currently to literally just that same place, that’s so boring and pointless just think of a better way of not solving [core narrative objective] than having it solved and then deus ex machina unresolving it, or think of a new objective after solving the first. Resetting progression is the laziest and least interesting way one can possibly approach things.
One should never segue from where one is at currently to literally just that same place, that’s so boring and pointless just think of a better way of not solving [core narrative objective] than having it solved and then deus ex machina unresolving it, or think of a new objective after solving the first. Resetting progression is the laziest and least interesting way one can possibly approach things.
Agreed. It’s a pretty solid rule of writing that one should have each goal completion happen once and only once if at all possible.
I hate reset-happy writing. It’s dull and frustrating.
The ending arc is not the strongest part, but I don’t think it’s saying anything like that. If anything, it feels like it’s kind of unsatisfyingly not coming to any conclusions about the themes.
stopped caring for the worldview presented when the author went down the “muh advanced tecknology bad, muh abundance bad, muh leisure bad” route
I love Laios, I really do, but he’s the last person to be giving a lecture like that. At least according to his trajectory as a character. He’s not invested in the politics of the world and hasn’t done the level of research Marcille has. It just feels off.
I hate fiction where magic is considered too dangerous to solve systemic problems. Like it’s an antagonistic force in the world that’s only good for warfare. It’s a natural force in most settings, making the mistrust seem so strange.
Like in this setting, the mad mage made mistakes, but they want to throw it all out.
I hate fiction where magic is considered too dangerous to solve systemic problems.
Dumbledore is good and powerful, but couldn’t be bothered to fight hitler. Good world building.
Preventing the holocaust would be worse than the holocaust, actually.
I love how these problems of worse timeliness only come up when the writer in question has to reflect on material conditions.
The implication is almost always “this is the best possible timeline, actually.”
(CW: nerd shit under spoiler)
spoiler
Granted, because of the butterfly effect, pretty much everyone conceived after the time travel direction change would be different people because that’s how sperm work, among an uncountable number of factors, so yeah it might suck for everyone you knew after that period to never have existed, but you could say the same about the people that now exist in the changed timeline and wouldn’t want to un-exist now that they exist.
Yeah, I hate that bullshit of implying a moral high ground by not touching anything when it’s like someone’s existence at a point in time affects the world in the smallest of ways.
But somehow if you just keep you head down and stay anonymous, things will work out in the favor of the status quo.
I tend to absolutely hate time travel gimmicks in fiction because they almost always have some clownish “oopsie woopsie we fucked up the timeline, but if we act out whatever we just broke/killed/whatever it’ll be like nothing changed at all, lol.”
Sometimes it’s like “be very careful… butterfly effect and all that wink wink nudge” which is not how the butterfly effect works you clowns. Just being there already changed everything ever afterward.
Then there’s the ultimate asspull: “apparently what we did was what already happened all along.”
What about fiction where magic doesn’t solve systemic problems because it’s part of the world and affected by the same systemic problems? Looking at you, Ursula.
So the magic itself is enforcing a status quo? Am I understanding that correctly?
It’s more that magic, like all power, is subject to the conditions of that society (something something coconut tree). Like, in the first Earthsea book you learn that “women’s magic” is considered basal and wicked, so they aren’t allowed into the fancy magic school, so women are born with the gift of magic are usually looked down upon as witches
and lesbiansMagic does have this “things must be in balance” nature to it that you could read as being pro status quo, but I think it’s more the case that the existing power structure in the world being unable (unwilful) to change. “Infinite are the arguments of mages” and some mages, it turns out, are just old men unable to see past what they’re accustomed to, even some wise ones.
Okay, so magic as an institution is flawed because the institutions that work magic are flawed?
Or is it a gender essentialism thing happening where magical women are evil lesbians?
Yes on the first one, maybe on the second. It’s implied women can learn the art magic just as men do and it’s all just men wanting/believing in their no girls allowed club, but from my read on it, it’s implied by some characters that it’s somewhat different and deeper. Good ass quote from an old hag:
A woman’s a different thing entirely. Who knows where a woman begins and ends? Listen mistress, I have roots, I have roots deeper than this island. Deeper than the sea, older than the raising of the lands. I go back into the dark … I go back into the dark! Before the moon I am, what a woman is, a woman of power, a woman’s power, deeper than the roots of trees, deeper than the roots of islands, older than the Making, older than the moon. Who dares ask questions of the dark? Who’ll ask the dark its name?”
It doesn’t outright say which is true so I guess you’re supposed to apply your own feminist values on it.
I HATE STATUS QUO THERMIAN ARGUMENTS
I HATE STATUS QUO THERMIAN ARGUMENTS
Nah, it’s not gonna end up as bad as that.
But it will continue in the grand tradition of anime/manga endings by escalating needlessly until the themes are muddled and the plot is a mess.
The old Slayers anime/light novels fought dark gods then had vacation episodes then fought more dark gods then had more vacation episodes.
RETVRN
I was just thinking about how good Slayers was lol.
Imagine having a D&D-inspired fantasy comedy but all the jokes are about characters and slapstick instead of about undercutting its own premise.
It was truly a good show/movie series and I loved the teasing overlaps where Naga stumbled into the latter anime episodes but of course confused and with her sister not recognizing her because of magic fuckery.
This is
notsorta the law of equivalent exchange.
Yeah the ending doesn’t go that far into lib shit
spoiler
more or less Liaos creates a more benevolent kingdom in which he tries to integrate everyone together and is home to often abused species such as the Orcs and Kobolds in the after credits pages, also apparently magic/mana is more readily available in the atmosphere and the elves have no idea if this is a good or bad thing (I’d say good maybe as it allows more magic to the races but it isn’t truly spelled out?)
As a Laios enjoyer after only seeing the anime but now reading that manga excerpt:
