I figure I may as well begin talking about this now – I’ve
been working on a comic lately. More than just a comic, more like two of them,
but only one has reached near-completion; all that’s left is for me to smooth
out some rough narrative patches and begin drawing the damn thing. Life is busy
– balancing school projects, college things, musical projects, writing, hell,
life in general – but it’s never too
busy, and I always have a lot of time to think.
This story came about from a series of one-shot joke comics
I wrote in my sophomore and junior years (basically, the last two years) to
show off to some of my friends, have a laugh, and be done with it. The style I used
for these comics was, at first, just stick figures with full heads of hair.
They had stick torsos and limbs and heads but each character had their own
unique hairstyle. Eventually, I began drawing the same stick figures, but I
added hands and shoes in order to give certain gags more gravity and weight to
them; soon, I began adding clothes. Eventually, it turned into something almost
human; the current and final character designs I have for the characters now
have realistic if thin arms, legs, hands, feet, and torsos; their heads,
however, are circular and stick-figure like. It allows me to draw them easily
and give the facial expressions more cartoonish variety.
The final character design for Starla, a keyboardist.
The story for this came about from watching Akira
late-at-night with my friend Autin, laughing our asses off at the terrible
voice acting and wickedly fast pacing; it deepened when I re-watched Bill and
Ted on DVD. I have absolutely no idea how the two films coincide beyond the
fact that they were made in the 80’s, but for some reason, I thought, wildly, “Akira,
Bill, and Ted”. The actual final product began something way different, more
like “FLCL meets Sonic the Hedgehog meets Bill and Ted meets Akira meets action
thriller”. I won’t reveal any particular details yet, but it’s a mixture of
adventure, time travel / teleportation, and coming-of-age.
Infodumps are atrocious. An Infodump is defined by TV Tropes
as “a type of Exposition that is particularly long or wordy. Although it can be
done in a way that is un-intrusive or entertaining, most are obvious,
intrusive, patronizing, and sometimes downright boring,” and god almighty, I
don’t think there’s a better explanation out there. While exposition is
absolutely necessary to figure out what the hell’s going on in a story, why
certain things are the way they are, it’s often used badly, leading to long
bouts of expositing ideas and scenarios that make you suffer. If you ever hear
the words “As you know” or, “you may remember”, skip ahead or just turn off
whatever you were watching or playing. That’s just lazy writing. But since
exposition is a necessary evil, you have to wonder: “how do I do it right”?
Well, you can’t opt out of it; a good story needs to have some
exposition (which is an account of events or goings-on in a story); while it
isn’t a pre-requisite, there hasn’t been a decent or coherent story without
one. If you have a simple story and a simple world built around it, then a good
old “Once Upon A Time” scenario works. Beauty and the Beast (the Disney one) is
a film that does this pretty perfectly. It uses beautiful visual cues involving
a castle’s stained-glass windows, uses clear-cut, straightforward words to
describe the backstory of the castle, and it doesn’t overstay its welcome; this
narration segues perfectly into the introduction scene of heroine Belle, which
is built around a huge musical number that gives an entertaining insight into
Belle’s character, how her character is perceived, and the village in which she
lives. So far, we have two forms of exposition that work perfectly; the “Once
Upon A Time” introduction, and exposition through music that is both fun to
listen to and narratively insightful, providing a wealth of information about
the characters and setting in about five minutes. It keeps the action going,
and it’s just brilliant direction.
Indeed, the lack of action and movement is the reason an
Infodump can suck so much; it’s boring! There is a scene from a contemptible
show called Sword Art Online that vomits forth information for a solid eleven
minutes. While that in itself is a sin, the scene is further dragged down by
the unbelievably boring visuals. It’s literally just two men sitting down in a
restaurant and talking, with occasional shots of their cake or a laptop. Sound boring
on paper? It’s even worse on screen. It’s just eleven minutes of pouring forth
information nobody’s going to remember perfectly without re-watching the scene
a second time, which means slogging through another eleven minutes of that shit,
and maybe even more.
A lack of intriguing visuals, character interaction, or anything actually interesting happening on screen.Great mix.
Even well-written shows, games, and films can fall into
trappings like this. Phantasy Star 2 slams you with an unprompted explanation,
beginning with “As you already know, Algo has been brought up by Mother Brain. My
work as a Commander has been to smoothly promote the plans of Mother Brain…”
Stop right there. If my player character already knows this, why the hell does
it need to be recited back to him/her? Hell, you might as well of had the
Commander say: “I wasn't explaining it to you, I was explaining it to them,” pointing
at the audience on that last word.
To steal from Lifetips: “Exposition should be doled out on a
"need to know" basis. Give the reader only as much as he needs to
know right now in order to understand the story.” That’s Show Don’t Tell 101.
Neon Genesis Evangelion is a show that used exposition perfectly; it gave us
hints, just subtle hints, brief snippets of information to tell us just what’s
going on, simultaneously providing answers and bringing up more questions that
would come to be addressed in the final episodes and follow-up film. All of
those hints and clues come together to form something that is, for the most
part, a fully-realized world; when it wasn’t using narrative cues to tell us
about the story, it used visual cues and sharp direction. Books can do the same
thing by implying a conversation rather than showing the entirety of it, which
would speed up the story and (hopefully) keep it from being too long or
redundant. Dialogue is always important, but too much dialogue is gratuitous.
“My dear young man,
don't take it too hard. Your work is ingenious; it's quality work! And there
are simply too many notes, that's all. Just cut a few and it will be perfect.”
- - Emperor Joseph II, Amadeus (1984)
But if you absolutely have to exposit information directly,
keep it short and simple. Have it be about a topic that addresses a particular
concern about the world and characters, but not all of the concerns. From
Skies of Arcadia:
Fina: Um...
excuse me, but I have a question. What exactly is an Air... Air Pirate?
Aika:
What? You were out sailing all by yourself and you don't know what Air Pirates
are?
Fina:
Oh... I... I'm sorry... it's my first time travelling.
Vyse:
Basically, Air Pirates are sailors that attack other ships and steal their
cargo.
Fina:
Attack?!
Aika: You
don't have to worry about us. We're "Blue Rogues." See, Air Pirates
are divided into two factions: The Blue Rogues and the Black Pirates. The Black
Pirates will attack anything in the sky... especially merchant vessels and
unarmed ships. However, we Blue Rogues only take cargo from armed ships, especially
the Imperial Armada.
Vyse: We
rob from the rich and keep the gold. But we use the gold to save people that
need our help. That's why we helped you. Don't worry, we aren't trying to
kidnap you or anything. Just relax and enjoy the trip.
See? Short, sweet, insightful. It could have gone on for
much longer, like explaining exactly what the “Imperial Armada” is and who’s in
it, how the rivalry and divide between the Rouges and Pirates occurred, but
none of that was necessary to the question Fina posed, so none of it showed up.
So there you have it. The creed of exposition is: “Show, Don’t
Tell, but if you have to tell, keep it brief and relevant.” Don’t just vomit
forth information; it’s like ripping a band-aid off. Leave small pieces of
exposition or information-exchanging here and there so that it all adds up by the
end of the story. A scavenger hunt would be no fun if all the treasure was just
hidden in one place, and the same can apply to storytelling.
Skies of Arcadia (Dreamcast, Gamecube) is my favorite
role-playing game of all time, and possibly my very favorite game of all time;
at the very least, it’s in my top five for sure. It’s often compared to games
such as Final Fantasy 7, Tales of Symphonia, Grandia 2, and Evolution 2: Far
Off Province; Skies of Arcadia seems to have the best critical reception of any
of these series, holding a near-perfect 93 on Metacritic. It was a critical
powerhouse but a commercial failure, due to the Dreamcast’s lack of lasting
success and the Gamecube version’s poorly-handled release. The critical success
of the game implies that there’s something about it that separates it from the
others; that “something” is the game’s optimistic charm.
By all means, Skies of Arcadia should not work as well as it
does. The entire story is a mashup of many standard fantasy and video game clichés,
and I began getting the feeling that I’ve heard and seen a lot of what happened
in the story before in other forms of media. I mean, hell:
·A ragtag band of young heroes searching for
magical artifacts to save the world.
·Over-the-top, evil villains trying to collect
the artifacts as well to rule the world.
·Said magical artifacts are conveniently located
in environments that fit their color / properties.
·Monsters and various creatures give the heroes
trouble over the course of their journey.
·Technologically-advanced, powerful evil empire.
·Nice morals about the power of love and
acceptance of others.
·A high emphasis on adventure and exploration to
distant lands.
·Magic and weapons work side-by-side in combat.
·Turn-based combat system.
·PIRATES.
Sound familiar to a billion other things you’ve seen before?
You aren’t alone. But what really makes Skies of Arcadia special is how it
utilizes every single one of these tropes in a way that is incredibly
refreshing and uplifting. The surprising success of the gloomy, angsty Final
Fantasy 7 on the Playstation had led to a large fleet of copycats trying to
imitate what Final Fantasy 7 did in the hopes of achieving the same amount of
success; such examples are Planescape: Torment, Panzer Dragoon Saga, Xenogears.
Skies of Arcadia ranks pretty low on the “dark and edgy” scale; it is one of
the brightest, most optimistic things I’ve ever seen, and it comes off as more
of a reconstruction of the classic RPG formula rather than a brooding deconstruction.
Yes, it’s cheesy, and hammy, and clichéd, but the game itself is far more than
the sum of its parts.
And that’s not even to say Skies of Arcadia is devoid of
original or decent writing; it’s superbly-written. The way that it builds up
its world is absolutely genius. Although the story itself is intentionally
linear and unchangeable, there is quite a lot to do within that linear timeframe
because of the emphasis on adventure and exploration. It’s a world set in the
sky, and the possibilities for that are never-ending. It boasts one of the most
completely realized worlds I’ve seen in anything, video gaming or otherwise,
and it gets you emotionally and aesthetically involved in the storyline.
Furthering this appeal is the game’s cast of discrete yet personable characters;
there’s someone you’re bound to like in this game, be it the bright-faced,
adventurous Vyse, the spunky Aika, the timid and mysterious Fina, the
ambitious, soulful Enrique, or the inside-and-out tough Drachma and the playful
flirt Gilder. They give Arcadia the strong human spine it needs for its enormous
action and circumstances to be emotionally involving on top of being
technically impressive.
The combat system is also really great, speaking of
technicality. It’s not that the combat is particularly deep, tactical, or hard
to master; it’s actually really straightforward, turn-based combat. But it’s
the simple fact that the combat just feels exhilarating. The big boss battles
in Skies of Arcadia have a huge sense of grandeur, and you want to win the battles, not just push through them in the hopes
that you can level up; you want to succeed.
There’s a fair amount of strategy and organization put into the combat
mechanics - hardly the stuff of intense analysis and complexity but
impressively nuanced and thoughtful. On the harder battles, you really have to
think about your moves, and whenever they work in your favor, it feels
incredibly satisfying. The attacks have serious weight to them, with a lot of
pretty visuals, impactful sound effects, and fast movement. It’s incredibly
shallow entertainment, action with no purpose other than looking really cool,
but it’s incredibly effective entertainment, too.
It’s for these reasons that I can pour so much time and
energy into Skies of Arcadia. I’m willing to overlook the few flaws it has –
the ridiculously random encounter rate, occasionally contrived plot points,
hiccups in visuals or animations – because they’re irrelevant when you have
something as fucking awesome as Skies of Arcadia. It’s the feel of the game
that makes it work; not the technicality, or the detail, or even the look of
the game, but the way that the story, characters, gameplay, and aesthetics make
me feel. Out of the countless JRPGs produced in the late 90’s – mid 2000’s,
there are only a few genuine works of art, and Arcadia’s one of them.
The poster is honestly the worst part about the movie. I have no idea what it signifies other than pure horror.
Smosh: The Movie happens to be my very first encounter with
Smosh and anything related to the Smosh lore, or whatever. I know nothing about
them beyond the fact that they’re a really popular comedic YouTube channel (at
one point the most subscribed channel on the site, which is really saying
something) and Red vs. Blue made a reference to them, like, once. I was told,
however, I wasn’t going to like it, that it would be awful. So, naturally, I
checked it out as quickly as possible, and luckily Netflix had it. I walked in with
absolutely no bias towards Smosh, and this movie would either make or break my
opinion towards Anthony Padilla and Ian Hecox, creators of some of the most
popular videos on YouTube I’ve actually never gotten around to watching. I’m
comparing it to nothing at all. I cannot say if the quality of the movie
matches the videos. It could be unambiguously worse than anything else
involving the broish comedic duo, or it could unambiguously better.
It was actually pretty okay.
This isn’t the first time a YouTube channel has made its way
onto the big screen. I think that honor might have to go to Fred: The Movie
(and its apparent many sequels), an invisibly mediocre film that was
nevertheless a much better candidate to be made into a movie than Smosh. Fred’s
multiple videos have (or had, I haven’t watched the channel in years, not that
it was ever the stuff of hefty analysis) a vague sense of consistency between
them that could have been easily fitted into the normal beats of an American
kid-focused film. There was Fred, his mother, the girl he liked, the
stereotypical bully, the faraway dad, blah blah blah. Fred was born to be made
into a crappy film, which it was. Smosh isn’t; their shtick is skit comedy and
one-shot comedy videos, with no genuine sense of continuity. That kind of
material is considerably harder to adapt into a coherent, consistent film.
Also, Steve Austin as himself. Give me a hell yeah.
But they try to do that anyway, with occasional success and
occasional failure. The plot follows as such: Anthony Padilla and Ian Hecox
(starring as themselves) are two slackers who live with Ian’s classically white,
bland parents. The only one trying to get his life back in order is Anthony,
who has a gig as a pizza delivery boy. Ian just lounges around and obsesses
over videos of a girl getting her butt massaged, whom he affectionately calls
Butt Massage Girl (get used to hearing that). They dick around for about ten
minutes before the actual story happens; their 5-year high school reunion is
approaching, and Anthony sees this as a chance to finally confess his love for
Anna Reid, an activist for people who suffer from Ring Finger Largeasia, a
disease that apparently kills people whose ring finger is larger than their
index finger (I happen to suffer from this). But, alas, there is an embarrassing
YouTube video of Ian on the reunion page, so embarrassing it undergoes a
meteoric rise in popularity in the span of a few hours (realistically enough, surprisingly; it gets about 700+ views total by the time the movie ends).
Ian wants the video taken down in the hopes that Anna never
sees the video; they hop off to the headquarters of YouTube, where they meet
the profoundly weird, idiosyncratic Steve YouTube, who tells them that although
a video cannot be deleted, it can be altered to have a more favorable outcome,
via a cyberspace portal located in his closet. Ian and Anthony hop through the portal
and enter into the world of YouTube itself, and it’s around this point the film
gets really terrific.
Well, alright, not “really terrific”. This isn’t a comic
masterpiece; in fact, the biggest problem with the writing is how often it
veers from inspired to stupid and back again in the blink of an eye. It is, at
once, surrealistic, and very generic and simple; impossible to look away from,
yet impossible to take seriously. But if there’s one thing the film definitely
has going for it, it’s that the parts involving Ian and Anthony’s journey
through YouTube are by far and away the best parts in the film. It’s a finer
line than you think; it manages to rip apart and deconstruct everything that’s
stupid and odd about YouTube (they travel through bad music videos, horrendous
advertisements, vlogs, and even videogame play-throughs, and these are just the
ones I can think about off the top of my head), yet it’s done with a lot of
love. The film never does shake the feeling that its natural home is on
YouTube, but that gives it a certain amount of charm and finesse.
But therein lies the problem. The film never does shake the feeling
that its natural home is on YouTube, and it shows. It’s anything-goes kind of
writing is perfectly suited to an eleven-minute skit on Adult Swim I would
totally watch, or even a half-hour short film, but not an eighty-minute movie
with a storyline, character arcs, and big-screen visuals. The “Real World”
parts of the movie are hokey and kind of slow, especially in comparison to the
wicked pacing of the “YouTube World” parts. The protagonists, two idiots who
mean well, are somewhat enjoyable and easy to root for, but they’re given an
incredibly generic “person learns to just be himself” character arc that, while
nice and a good moral, is one of the dominant themes of, like, everything. The
one-note personalities of the other characters make them feel more like plot
devices rather than characters; the only ones I could ever get behind were
Steve YouTube, who was funny when he wasn’t used for dick jokes, and Diri, a
tongue-in-cheek ripoff of Siri that even the characters note is no different
from the actual product. The cinematography is… okay. Just, okay. It gets by.
And there are a few points when it becomes more endurance test than film,
seeing how long we can withstand the nonstop stupidity, the dick jokes, the occasionally
grotesque violence, and utter chaos. Even the rock-inspired soundtrack doesn’t
have much going for it; I’m struggling to remember what the opening theme was.
This isn’t to say the film wasn’t enjoyable. The film is
creative, and occasionally delightful; the various cameos of people like YouTube
stars Markiplier, Steve Austin, and Jenna Marbles work in the film’s favor, and
it winds up being more of a love letter to YouTube than a piss-take of YouTube;
it never mocks it audience nor panders towards it. But the film is also very “normal”
and generic, with its “be yourself” theme and tendency to use lowbrow / nerd
humor as cheap jokes. Couple that in with all-over-the-place pacing (it is at
once too fast and too slow) and you get a film that ultimately lacks the
necessary impact it was going for.
