JediTricks wrote:It's bad writing because it's using a cheap trope to jerk the audience around only to later reward them with a scene backing off the moment.
I'd agree it's a cheap trick, but that doesn't make it bad writing in itself.
The "I, Robot" movie example didn't apply at all from what I could see, so I ignored it because you just seem so angry and want to argue about everything, it's my prerogative to respond or not as I choose, and I was trying to stay on topic and get us through this as quickly as possible. The reason "I, Robot" doesn't apply is that the narrative continues on and shows Sonny alive again in that same narrative, that the intent is made clear by later events within the same story, while AHM has no such scene intended by the author. I Robot movie also sets up the idea that Sonny is visually identical to his fellow robots in the film, thus giving credence to the possibility of that switch later, yet there's nothing I know of in AHM which thematically suggests the content might be jerking the reader around in that way.
I wasn't angry, but now I am a little, because this is not any reason to dismiss that example. It doesn't apply because it's in the same narrative and Sonny is visually identical to the other robots? While Thundercracker may not have been brought back in AHM, he is brought back in the same narrative. The Ongoing is part of the same storyline. And Sonny does have some visually distinctive features. He has blue eyes rather than green that all the others have, and he is made from harder alloys that makes his appearance seem a little bit more pristine than the others. And the point of the example is to show a situation where we see a character seemingly killed off, yet something happens off screen that allows him to survive. Just like Thundercracker.
As for AHM being part of the story, I am not buying that argument on any level, the story as a whole is under a specific banner and a specific set of circumstances which surround that idea, later issues continue from that point but are only reflections and extensions because they came later and aren't part of that AHM story or in this case written by its author. You are willing to accept later material to alter original material's intent, I don't think that's valid in this particular situation, so we've come to an impasse.
If AHM was meant to be a stand alone story, I might be able to buy your argument. But the fact is, it isn't. What banner it's under is irrelevant. AHM itself was a continuation of Fuman's storylines, each of which had their own banners as well, yet no one tries to claim they are "only reflections and extensions" because they are more than that. These stories are all connected as part of a larger ongoing story line. You're unwillingness to accept that is altering the intent of the publisher which supersedes anything an author may or may not have intended. Of which, nothing you've said has convinced me McCarthy actually intended for Thundercracker to die. The scene is ambiguous. It really seems to me like you're selectively ignoring anything that contradicts your own views here.
Not enough about AHM 12's particular material is ambiguous enough to fit that mold, those 4 panels are a clear chain of events that Skywarp intended to shoot Thundercracker in the eye out of anger in feeling as if TC betrayed the Decepticons. You can argue the survivability of the wound, but I'm not willing to entertain the idea that there was enough ambiguity in those 4 panels to allow for anything more, hence, impasse.
The scene is clear enough Skywarp intended to shoot Thundercracker, but it's not clear enough to know where he actually hit Thundercracker or how badly he was damaged.
That would be a great example because the author intended the character of Sherlock Holmes to be firmly dead at the end of "The Final Problem". Holmes' survival of the fight at Reichenbach Falls was an intentional retcon to appease readers who demanded the character's return, and Conan Doyle had to change the circumstances surrounding the situation in order to make the unsurvivable battle survivable - in other words, Conan Doyle intentionally cheated to change what his previous story had intended.
I know. Point being he never confirm Holmes was dead in that story as Watson didn't actually see him go over the waterfall with Moriarty, allowing for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle a way to bring Holmes back, despite his intentions to kill him off.
He's a wizard and it's magic and the character did die and had to be reborn which that story's universe supports.
It's still really not that different from any other example here. SOMETHING allows the character to come back from an implied death that happens off page, at least until Gandalf fills us in.
Are you seriously trying to cite Dragonball Z as a quality example? It's a cartoon made for another society entirely.
You realize this entire discussion came up as a result of a comic book, right? It doesn't matter that it's a cartoon, and it doesn't matter what society it was made for, the circumstances of the scene still fits. You're making up reasons to try and dismiss a perfectly good example.
Unfamiliar and your example itself seems to require a modifier.
Not really a modifier, I was establishing the context. The Turman show is a movie about a guy whose whole life is a reality television show, and Truman is the only one who doesn't know it. In order to keep him from finding out his whole life has been a lie, and keep him confined to this city set they built, the shows creators engineer ways to keep him from trying to leave. One of those ways is that they 'killed off' his father while on a boating trip to make Truman afraid of the water. But of course they don't actually kill off the actor playing his father. Years later, the actor breaks back onto the set to see Truman, which starts Truman to start questioning everything. Eventually the creators decide to write the father back in to try and stop Truman from rebelling against the 'reality' of the show. So in effect, the father disappears under the water, suggesting he drowned, but is later revealed to still be alive and explain his absence as amnesia.
Wow, you really nailed me there by using the worst piece of Trek writing of its era, writing so bad that even the authors of it in the DVD commentary apologize for how clumsy it was. The Nexus is a MASSIVE cheat, possibly the most intentionally awful cheat in all of entertainment.
Generations was clumsy, but you can't dismiss the whole thing just for 'bad writing'. That's completely subjective. You're not even addressing the point here.
Are you content that I addressed all of your examples? No, because they didn't convince me of anything at all and thus wasted both of our time? Right. Well, now you know why I'm going to pick and choose what I respond to, don't freak out at me next time.
I'd wouldn't call that addressing them at all. You basically found anyway you could to just ignore them with out actually addressing the point of any of those examples. So what if DBZ is a cartoon? So what Sir Arthur Conan Doyal intended for Homles to be dead? It doesn't change the facts. All these characters were implied to die with out actually showing it in the story, and they were later revealed to be alive.
It is not the simplest explanation, that's why. If the author isn't showing us the character moving away in the next panel, the simplest explanation is that the character hasn't moved. If you assume that the character "moved slightly" in this case, what you're actually saying is that he moved considerably because there's a gun in someone's eye, a slight movement isn't going to change the outcome in a meaningful manner. It now has to be a movement slight enough that it doesn't change the dynamic of the relationship of characters yet significant enough that he entirely misses, that's not within the reasonable scope of the material presented, you have to make that up in your own mind contrary to the most likely thing you're seeing on the page.
I have yet to see you explain any reason why it isn't the simplest explanation. Not everything the characters do the author has to show us. I mean, you cannot say with any certainty what McCarthy's intention was here since we don't have a specific comment from him other than it was 'out of his hands'. For all we know, he may have wanted to kill Thundercracker, but IDW told him to make it ambiguous so they could bring him back. Whatever the case, the result is still the same.
Characters can only do in a story what the author intends, on-panel or off-panel, and that activity still has to be communicated to the reader for it to be an acceptable part of the story.
And again, we have no idea what the author or publisher really intended. All we know for sure is what we've got from the comic. And what we've got is an ambiguous scene where we don't really see what happened and the fact Thundercracker survives.
Your example from MTMTE is the very expression of a story communicating an idea of an off-panel event, the resulting action is expressed when Swerve uses a meta-bomb meta-joke to whisper to Rewind (not Brainstorm) "it must have happened off-panel", that's expressing the result. No such moment is expressed in AHM 12.
Aside from the fact we don't actually see Thundercracker take the hit? And then we see Thundercracker did in fact survive in the ongoing?
I'm done with this. You apply your own standard to "holding perfectly still" despite nothing saying one way or the other, yet expect that I should accept your take on this. You don't follow the chain of events as presented. You flat out ignore the fact that no other content is shown in the moment or the overall story arc to support your conclusions of "maybe he moved". You are applying the "anything at all can happen" mentality to this without thinking through what would most likely happen. Have you ever had a weapon pointed at you at close range? I have. Even the slightest movement can get you killed, when there's a gun in your face there is no movement you can do that can outrun a triggerfinger when that gunman is intending to shoot. Even the subtlest evasive movement is obvious and trackable at that range, and certainly any evasive movement at that range would still put Thundercracker in the 4th panel, miss or hit - if he drops down, the gun would be fired into his forehead; if he slides left or right and somehow the gun in his eye doesn't simply get pulled along with it since it's an indentation, he'd still be there; if he falls backwards he'd still catch the blast in his face. So you have to ignore all that by saying "someone moved", you have to literally break the chain of events in your mind to get away with your argument for panel 4, you have to say "he moved between panels 2 and 3" and then retcon a reason why that'd make any sense at all - that's not simple, and it's not logic, and it's surely not shown in the story before, during, or afterwards.ou guys are arguing that the MTMTE false-deaths are reasonable given Thundercracker's survival, yet the only reason you believe Thundercracker's survival now is because of recent books like MTMTE that have jerked you around into not trusting the original presentation of the narrative chain of events from 4 years ago. How can something presented at the time as a clearcut intention of a character being killed off, the character left out of that storyline altogether afterwards and then left off the pages for another year, work as an example of context that justifies itself when it finally reverses its statement? AHM makes a statement on its own, that's what I'm trying to say, within that context the argument that he might have survived should be treated as skeptical at best and a retcon at worst, neither of which make for good contextual argument support.
If you're really done with this, then my last $.02... I am following the chain of events as presented in the book. I'm using everything we see in the comic to support my view and what we don't see, which is equally important in this case. You're the one who has said that not seeing Thundercracker take the hit "says nothing". You're the one who has been denying any possibility that Thundercracker could have survived, despite the fact that we see he does, in fact, survive. What you really mean by the chain of events is simply your own interpretation of those events. I can see why you'd think it should be so clear cut, but the fact is, it isn't clear cut at all. There is a reason why we don't actually see Thundercracker get hit, because they are intentionally leaving it open to the possibility he survived. And once again, I'm not applying an "anything at all can happen" mentality. I've supported my view based on what we are and aren't shown in AHM and by what we see when Thundercracker turns up alive in the Ongoing. You're deliberately ignoring these facts. Even if you don't agree with the "he moved off panel" idea, Shockwave makes a good point the perspective we see Skywarp aiming his gun might be a little off. Whatever the case might be, the outcome is still the same. We don't see Thundercracker take the hit, and he is shown to survive. And you can't assume a Transformer weapon is the same as a human weapon. We've seen Transformers take some close range shots before. They didn't get knocked back. Heck, with that scene where Optimus shot Soundwave in the face I posted a while back? Soundwave doesn't move at all. He just falls down. This isn't a retcon and it isn't back-writing because we don't see what actually happened. You cannot discount the Ongoing just because you believe AHM was making it's own statement. AHM is only a chapter of a larger overall story. The context in AHM leaves Thundercracker's fate wide open, to the point we can, within reason of that context, say he could have survived. Which he did.
andersonh1 wrote:JediTricks wrote:I'm going to do something unprecedented, I'm going to discuss MTMTE now.
We have gone off on a major tangent, haven't we!
Yes, indeed. More proof that AHM should have been better written.
