Your Biggest, Most Epic Fights

By pinnacle or climax, I mean anagnorisis writ large. A fight, unless some important realization occurs in its midst (and not after), cannot, in a literary sense, be a climax.

To use a fairly accessible example, the climax of 300 isn't any single fight scene, but Leonidas' decision to continue fighting.

edited 12th Dec '11 11:50:55 PM by kashchei

I dunno. I've read stories that had no anagnorisis, or that had something vaguely akin to it well in advance of the final battle, and I wouldn't say that all of them were bad.

But what is it that made the battle itself climactic?

To be honest, I don't even care what a climax is at this point, let alone where it is in the story. I just care whether the characters and events depicted are interesting. Some of the stories I've found interesting resolved the story's conflict with a fight. (And no, I don't care to define "conflict" either.)

I'd just like to note that martial arts include academics, such as science, philosophy and at least a little politics. The techniques a fighter uses are going to be influenced by such factors; a kenjutsu practitioner in an Urban Fantasy might be prone to greater improvisation than most, for instance, due to the gaps in teaching that may have followed the Meiji era following from the Western political dominance of Japan.

One might have an entire plot based on one or more of the above elements. Skilled combat transcends purely physical considerations and can become something more. For instance, many medieval combat manuals claim that skill is useless without courage. There's a theme applicable to a climax in combat right there, albeit basic.

I'd agree with the argument that fight scenes without relevance are silly, but to claim that combat is unrelated to plot or characterisation is just the same.

I'd make the counterargument that a story without fight scenes — unless it contains sex scenes instead — isn't worth bothering with. I prefer works I read by other authors to at least be a little on the action-packed/fast-paced side... I prefer readers of my own work to pass out from adrenaline shock.

This is a matter of preference, of course. I insist that stuff I read contains some serious struggle, of either fight-scene, political-maneuvering or Xanatos-imitation type, but any of them can be interesting. And I'm fully aware that some people enjoy things that I find boring. I've met plenty of people who find action-type stories boring themselves.

You know, a fight scene itself doesn't actually need a story to be good. It's like watching a game/sport show. It just depends on how creative you can be with them. Sadly not everyone can do that.

edited 13th Dec '11 5:08:41 PM by PsychoFreaX

There's like three on the story (segment) in my signature.

Mindless fight scenes are idiotic. Combat or hand-to-hand fighting should be purposeful to the story. I don't write about the Fall of Berlin because it's "cool," I write about it because it's extremely important to the characters and the plot and assists in showing the themes I'm focusing on. I mean, Rule of Cool has its place, but it isn't going to make for a good story or good characters. Just for some fluffy piece of fiction to pass the time with before moving on to something with more substance.

Exactly. Yes. This.

Here and elsewhere, Mayan, I think you underestimate the utility of slower, more thoughtful scenes. There's a reason why Macbeth moves so readily from bloody murder to light comedy—it's ultimately better not to have readers pass out from adrenaline shock, but to calm them when they're about to do so, so you can later ramp up the adrenaline again.

(Then again, you seem to downplay everything other than sex and violence, including basic stylistic guidelines. Given how high your average rating score is, there's clearly an audience for this style—I guess it's like Three Chords and the Truth, with animal impulse in place of truth—but I still couldn't last longer than a few paragraphs when attempting to read one of your works.)

Edit: Deleted a link to the page for a story you wrote under another username. That was probably too low a blow, since you seem to not want that story connected to the Enemy Mayan name.

edited 13th Dec '11 6:31:07 PM by feotakahari

You're all seeing things too much in black and white here. A plot can certainly work well without fight scenes and fight scenes can work without an outside plot if done creative enough. I'm not going to agree with stand alone sex scenes though.

Yeah those kinda need a (well-written) plot. PWP isn't fun to read.

I'd make an argument for Éden Éden Éden by Pierre Guyotat, but that's really not so much porn as... I'm not sure if there's a word. And it's still not "fun" to read. Interesting? Yes. Pleasant? Oh hell no.

edited 13th Dec '11 6:49:23 PM by JHM

"I'd make the counterargument that a story without fight scenes — unless it contains sex scenes instead — isn't worth bothering with."

And this is why you were earlier accused of pandering to the lowest common denominator.

@kash,

Don't insult the common denominator like that, they have feelings too you know.

Well, not all good stories need a fight scene, or a sex scene, of course.

First of all, what exactly is a fight scene? Would an conflict-filled argument between two characters count?

And now we're going to move on to the point that everything is relative. I'd say it's partly, but not significant enough for people to recognize it as one.

One guy just punched another guy.

Bruise for a week.

Once in an older Fanfic, I had a depiction of an over 6 Years lasting space battle involving fleets from more than 5 galactic superpowers.

We ready to talk about figh— Oh, nope, we're not.

Seriously, can we actually discuss fights or what? I'm not sure why people have taken this thread to discuss their personal preferences of a fight itself when there's not even an example to discuss. Each side is just making up situations where a fight scene is bad/good and arguing for it as a universal rule. We get it - bad writing is bad. Let's settle down and just talk about fights, specifically epic fights, and why those fights are epic. Please?

Some people did post their fights a page back or so, if you want an example to discuss.

Actually, you've got it backward. I didn't want the Pinata name attached to my return to TV Tropes, so I registered a new account (I burned a lot of bridges when I left before, accusing the people who were trying to "clean up" the site of being Nazi douchebags and then telling Leigh Sabio I was in love with her).

But now that Idler20 has successfully guessed that I am indeed Pinata, I have no problem with people knowing I wrote (well, am writing since there are further installments planned) The Sex Star.

edited 14th Dec '11 9:02:59 AM by EnemyMayan

That's pretty much my fault. As I said, my original intention was simply to make one post describing my concerns about this thread. Unfortunately, people jumped up to argue against me, and then other people popped up to argue against them in turn, and the whole thing got completely derailed. I never actually meant to turn this into a debate on the value of fight scenes - the thread subject bothered me, so I made a post noting that, but I'm not going to try and stop people from talking about their "biggest, most epic fights" if that's really what they want to do.

So I'd personally like to end the derail. We can talk about it somewhere else, but I don't see much point, since neither side is going to convince the other.