This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Bluetooth The Pirate: Oh, it's an author tract all right, but it just so happens that Vaughn's opinions are moderate, reasonable and low-key, so it's not anywhere near as fillibusterly as Ayn Rand or State of Fear. That, and most of the action comes from characters, not genders. I fear for what the film does to it, if only because two hours isn't enough time to tell this kind of story.
- Korgmeister: Thank God this was the comic I read immediately after Cerebus
Haven: Oddly enough, the "Dreaming" theory is my choice—though I also think that it folds right into the "morphic resonance" idea, the Dreaming and the "morphic field" being two ways to describe the same thing, or maybe two aspects of a single phenomena (or maybe the morphic field is an aspect or side-effect of the Dreaming). ...And yet, I would think it was a huge Wall Banger if the series came out and said it.
H. Torrance Griffin: Concerning the Dying Like Animals entry; I get where the Sons of Arizona are Survivalist Nutbar Lone Wolves, but where do the Daughters of the Amazon fall under that list.
Haven: I would really not describe this as a Shoot the Shaggy Dog, at all. It'd be a Shoot the Shaggy Dog if Dr M's double-suicide with Yorick had been successful, or something. I'd call it a Bittersweet Ending.
Hipployta: I'm sticking with the STSD ending. My massive dissertation was edited down to two sentences but I stand by it.
Haven: I think it really would have been STSD if the human race had been wiped out. But they succeeded in their quest to save the world, so it's not quite STSD. And hey, Beth found love, even if Yorick didn't :P and it's not like he was locked up in that cell the whole time between the penultimate issue and the Distant Finale...it was only a few months, is what I got out of that scene.
I'm also a little skeptical of the claim "neither disproportionately utopian nor dystopian." It seemed more a-topian, but whenever we found any sort of system of authority it was always kind of fucked up, or at least hiding a dark secret or something.
Haven: Gained the conviction to edit it out. Sure, Beth saying she was breaking up with him, followed by Yorick admitting he loves 355 only for her to die immediately after is a massive Player Punch and/or kick in the nuts. But it falls short of a Shoot the Shaggy Dog because a Shoot the Shaggy Dog is "everything the protagonists did is for naught." And in the end that's not the case because Yorick gets successfully cloned, as does Dr. Mann, and things look bright for the human race in general. Their quest was to save humanity, and if they'd failed in that then it would have been a Shoot the Shaggy Dog. Also, several sympathetic characters do get happy endings. So Yeah.
