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Comments
I actually saved most of the things I said. It looks like the thread's drifted a bit, but I may as well throw it out here anyway.
In my opinion, this gets close to it, but not quite. The reason magic isn't science isn't just a definitional or semantic problem. Science is an artificial frame of mind--the scientific method isn't something that inheres in nature; rather, it is a technology. Magic comes from a different viewpoint, a fundamentally subjective one. So saying that magic's defining quality is "being mysterious" isn't quite accurate: it is mysterious, but that's a byproduct coming from that viewpoint.
By which I mean: mystical traditions in the real world are essentially based on dreams and visions, deep meditation, etc. Singular experiences which profoundly affect the recipient, and which resist communication. They are typically reached through exhaustion, drugs and fever-dreams, essentially altering your point of view until it doesn't align with anyone else's perspective (which is the opposite of science, the main purpose of . What you bring back from that place...that's what qualifies you to be a medicine man or shaman or whatever. The experience changes you, because it's so powerful, but unlike other experiences of that type--great traumas, psychotic episodes, etc.--either your culture has in place a whole framework in which this experience makes sense, or you -make- one. Either way, you become a revered figure, perhaps even a celebrity, which gives you both a position of authority which people will accept and a powerful charisma which can, long story short, work miracles. (And that is, ultimately--through many, many permutations--where the popular idea of "magic" comes from.)
Well, in the real world anyway (though mind that I'm speaking from a pointedly agnostic viewpoint here). The idea that it gives you magical powers comes from...to put it one way, deeply ingrained cultural expectations, and how they interact with individual psychologies. Before there were therapists, there were shamans or exorcists. Mental illnesses, for instance, could be described as possession, which gives you a way to interact with it through a predefined frame of reference. (I should add that a scientific, clinical approach is an improvement for many reasons, which are mostly self-explanatory, much like hospitals are an improvement over folk medicine--but going back to the main discussion, that wouldn't necessarily be true in a fantasy setting.)
Hmm. I suppose I should clarify something (something that was brought up when I talked to vandro): another big reason that I consider plot more important is that it's a culmination of all the other factors of the story; the characters, while more essential for basic construction, are parts to a whole thing (whether or not that thing has a plot that isn't completely simplistic). I'm a final product, sum-of-the-parts-is-greater-than-the-whole sort of person, and I primarily watch/read things for the emotional impact, as opposed to analyzing the world behind them, so it goes without further elaboration that I watch things for different reasons than other people. If that makes sense. In any case, I don't think "characters are more important" should be treated as an objective truth.
And that's not one of the complaints that I generally have about them; like I said before, as long as some characters are interesting, I can watch in spite of a crappy character or two, even if that character's the lead (heck, it's basically an unspoken rule that the secondary characters are more interesting than the leads in harem anime).
I should probably just bow out, but I saw a new point presented, so why not rebut?
But the story is not the whole thing. What about presentation?
I don't disagree. Presentation is important, too, and it's both a part of plot and a part of characterization.
Lemme try putting it like this: I, personally, tend to value the plot of a work, and its sum emotional impact, more than the world/ideas behind it, or its characters individually/in select groups. But I think it's wrong to treat one or the other, plot or characters, as objectively more important than the other, because they're both tied too closely together, and because not everyone sees it one way or the other, and holds different reasoning to different levels of importance. For instance, if we keep having this debate, it'll come back to the fact that it seems I'm not as easily ruined on a work as some people are when a couple of the characters suck.
My point is that presentation is separate from plot and characterization. While it does affect both, it is a value of its own.
I saw that that was the point you were making. I was addressing the point that the story isn't the only thing, and that presentation is important. But I'm not sure I agree that presentation is separate from either of those things. Then again, I don't think I've studied this as much as you have, what with you being a collegiate film student, so if you can explain, I might have a better idea of what you're getting at. And is there anything you want to address in the second part of my post?
I think there's not much I can refer to in the second paragraph. Personally, I sincerely believe that characters are objectively more important than plot and story, because they're the ones that trigger the emotional reaction that stories are supposed to trigger. And at their core, I feel that above conveying worldviews and thoughts in a non-essay way, stories are about making you feel something. And let's face it, it doesn't matter if someone dies in the most epic of all battles. If you didn't like them at all, you're not gonna feel anything more than mild indifference. Which is something an author should strive to avoid
You should remember that I only had two semesters.
anyway, what I'm trying to say is that presentation, while affecting both story and character(ization)s, it's something that works on its own. However a story's told, however the prose is written, while affecting our views of the above values, it doesn't affect their own core values, if that makes sense. So, if I write Don Quixote from the first or the third person, it doesn't change the fact that this is a story of a man obssessed with knight stories who goes mad and tries to rescue a damsel he made up for himself in order to give a goal to his aimless life. I can twist around the presentation, change the vocabulary, use different metaphors and even tell the story anachronologically. But it doesn't stop Don Quixote being about these things. All it may or may not do, depending on my own skills while representing and crafting this is affect how you perceive the plot and characterization.
This is, of course, assuming that during said supposed adaptation, I don't change any aspect of the plot and characterization whatsoever.
I guess so, but I look at story in terms of "what it causes" (emotional reaction and possibly deeper thought, depending on the nature of the work), instead of "what causes it" (characters/imagery/circumstances/concepts), and so it's ultimately the plot that did that, and it did that by using the characters within the work; the characters are pieces of that feeling, and the story(ies) encapsulates those pieces, hence my viewpoint. Hopefully that makes sense and doesn't soud too anti-intellectual or anything. I can still feel something in a story even if I dislike the person an event's revolving around anyway; it just takes a little more effort and better-than-average writing.
True. But if I like them somewhat, or some of them, then I'll still enjoy the story. If the battle wasn't suitably epic (or fill that space in with whatever other type of plot), I stop caring altogether, no matter how many cool characters. If both were lacking (and if there's not one well-written character, there's probably not a well-written story to be had), then that's just poor writing entirely.
And I don't see anything I disagree with concerning your description of presentation.
Exactly. Even if nothing particularly interesting is happening, a work of well-written and interesting characters is at worst relaxed schmoozing and shooting the shit.
Which kills a work that's supposed to move faster than that, at least for me.
Well yeah, if there's already a bigger story with some sense of immediacy going on, filler is bad.
I would argue for filler not being necessarily bad, although it can certainly be a drawback, depending on the writer. I mean, look at the X Files. The mythology just plain sucked, while the monster of the week episodes were the ones that made the series be good.
Originally, there wasn't actually any planned plot, though, was there?
I'm not aware of how it worked at the beginning, really. All I know is that by the end of it, I was waiting more for the creepy filler episodes than for the ones following the whole Cigarette Smoking Man's conspiracy.
^^The way it worked was that there wasn't supposed to be a main plot, but then when Gillian Anderson got pregnant, they had to explain why Scully was gone from the show for a bit, and it just kinda snowballed.
I'm sorry that your favorite animation suffered from Satoko, Forzare.
X-Files' alien invasion plot was all made up when gillian anderson got pregnant and they needed a to make her disappearance plot relevant.
Wow, ninja. Idiocy on my part.