Overly Sarcastic Productions

Also,Coraline's Other World with the Other Mother

-shudder-

Of the aforementioned three, Coraline actually fits this best.

In today's History Summarized, Blue talks about the history of the Acropolis of Athens.

Edited by jouXIII on Apr 29th 2022 at 6:08:47 PM

they say of the acropolis where the pantheon is!

Beat me to it.

In today's Fables and Folktales, Red talks about a Siberian folktale, the Sun Maiden and the Crescent Moon:^note and before you ask, this was scripted long before current events in Ukraine, though the intro touches a bit upon it.

I really dig the art for the chase sequence in that story. I love it when Red draws monsters.

In today's City Minutes, Blue talks about the Crusader States:

Has Red not read or heard of The Dresden Files or is that just not as popular as I thought it was?

Dresden Files is one of those series that gets many mentions on TV Tropes, but I've never heard mention outside of it.

There was a TV show on Sky with a talking skull...

Said talking skull is about most of what they got right. Though Dresden using a hockeystick as a wand is perfectly in-character.

Yeah, the TV show was very...2007 Syfy. The style worked for stuff like Eureka and Warehouse 13 that weren't really directly based on anything, didn't work super great for an adaptation of a pre-existing book series.

Then the Expanse came along, and suddenly they actually put budget into it.

Syfy goes through cycles. The Expanse showed up around the same time as the Magicians, Krypton and Dark Matter, shows that at least tried to look like they had really high production values. The cycle before that was the Eureka/Warehouse 13/Sanctuary/Haven cycle where they didn't really care if it looked cheap and weird a lot of the time. Alphas and Dresden Files got caught in that part. Before that, it was a sort of staggered cycle with Stargate/Farscape/BSG where they wanted the production values to look really good, but they weren't super concerned about looking really weird or silly at times.

I'm expecting them to slip into a cheaper looking phase in the next few years, depends on how that Ark series they have planned looks.

(Yes, there's usually a few outliers in each period that either look real cheap or really polished, depending on the prevailing direction. LEXX and Killjoys are both good examples of this)

Edited by Zendervai on May 17th 2022 at 3:24:50 PM

Has anybody looked at their skull adorned caps lately? Red tackles the Heel Realization trope on Trope Talk

Edited by CountofBleck on May 20th 2022 at 11:11:58 AM

I'm honestly surprised she didn't mention Hunter from The Owl House.

What if the protags realize they are in the Empire side, see the atrocities that the Empire commit, turn to the Rebel side only to learn the Rebel does even more atrocities and the Empire at least have a point?

That's a zigzagging trope. And also reeks of Both Sides ideology.

I'd guess because she show isn't done yet.

“Even more atrocities” and “at least the Empire has a point”?

You’re either writing Imperial apologia or you’re trying to test the reader’s patience with seeing how far you can go with everybody being being a scumbag that needs a noose.

Edited by fredhot16 on May 20th 2022 at 12:09:52 PM

At the absolute best in that case, you're doing a story about a cycle of revenge where the same two cultures alternate between the roles of empire and rebellion. But it's super easy to fall into "no, the Empire was right to oppress this culture that was rebelling!" which is super gross.

Well there is this historical fiction novel about the Fall of the Ming dynasty, MC joined the rebels and help them defeat the Imperial force, force the Emperor to kill himself but then the rebel turn out to be not much better since they immediately sack the capital and their leader both can't govern (since he was a peasant) and immediately fall into decadent. This let the Manchu to team up with former generals of the Empire who want to restore order to team up and defeat the rebel forces, take control of the country and form the Qing dynasty. The MC was so disgust of both the Imperial forces and the Rebels that he left China.

There is a sorta sequel where another MC got stuck in the power struggle between the Qing government and the Han Rebels. The Qing is corrupt but the Emperor is the MC best friends, meanwhile the rebels not only fighting the government, they also fight among themselves to see which group is more deserving to rule China once they defeat the Qing. In the this story MC also say "Fuck it!" and leave.

When it's a historical fiction novel based on real events, that's a bit different.

The Ming Dynasty actually was overthrown by a rebel leader who tried to declare his own dynasty but he wasn't competent enough to do the job.

It's when a fictional story is trying to go for shades of grey but accidentally throws in something (usually pretty racist) to justify why the empire crushed the culture the rebels are from that it's a problem.

Edited by Zendervai on May 20th 2022 at 3:35:45 PM

This trope talk made me realize something about certain antipaladin(or warpriest in crpg I guess) from Wrath of the Righteous Pathfinder campaign and how they changed character from AP to CRPG.

What is same with both versions? The character got seduced by disguised demon and convinced that "hey it's super good idea to take the artifact that protects the city from demons teleporting in and bring it along attack outside the city walls" with predictable results of demons taking the city and slaughtering population because the artifact isn't no longer protecting city.

Afterwards?

AP: Realizes when they see that that they are actually enjoying what they are seeing and become gleefully evil antipaladin.

CRPG version: Is genuinely horrified and tries to redeem themselves for decades unsuccessfully until they finally break down and figure out that they might as well just join the demons.

Yeah Red is right, the "less morally complex" version is more fun to witness