Overly Sarcastic Productions

Speaking of controversial writing, this Sunday Red's going to be reading the rather infamous "My Immortal."

Modern Classics Summarized: My Immortal when?

A new Trope Talk episode came out today: Urban Fantasy.

Red also has a bit where she talks about the importance of doing your research if you're going to appropriate stuff from other cultures. AKA "Don't just use 'skinwalker' as a fancy term for a shapeshifter."

"If you don't know what you are talking about, don't put it in your story". Wow, it is kinda sad that this is a point that a bit too many creatives need to hear. Also, Red hit the nail on the head with her point about paying attention to the cultural context since it is something I tend to take issue with. Yeah, drawing from cultures can be very enriching, but if what you are doing is very surface level and in name only to the point where it verges on pretention, maybe just make up another name or something?

Yeah, especially when it comes to cherished traditions that aren't typically taught to outsiders. You really gotta do it with care, if do it you must.

The example of wendigo being turned into generic hairy monsters seems pretty common - for example, the Warcraft universe has a whole species called wendigos and in Warcraft 3 they shared their model with another creep type called sasquatch, so yeaaah...

What kinda gets me about this in particular, even if there wasn't the whole aspect of cultural appropriation, is that the themes surrounding the wendigo all could have well been inspirations without appropriating the folklore.

For example, compare the Mourngul from Warhammer Fantasy. They're clearly inspired by the legends of the wendigo - especially their association with cannibalism and the cold - but they're never called such. They're playing into a general theme in the Warhammer setting, namely that cannibalism is always bad and will lead to a cursed existence, one way or another.

You know it's bad when even a company like GW - who had a lot of questionable stuff in their tabletop back in the day - decided to not actually use "wendigo" anywhere in their setting.

Though of course something that is very loosely inspired by cultural folklore, but steers clear of the cultural terminology etc might still count as appropriation.

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Apr 3rd 2020 at 6:42:32 PM

Warhammer Fantasy took the entire culture into it setting rather than just some aspects and usually consistence with the internal culture. They could called it Wendigo but it doesn't fit the internal culture logic of the Vampire Count. They do come up with some of most creative stuffs by drawing from real world culture like Ancient Egypt Tomb King and Aztec Lizardman riding dinosaurs.

Edited by BattleRaizer on Apr 3rd 2020 at 11:49:41 PM

We have a new Miscellaneous Myths episode, this time talking about the most dangerous monster the Greek gods ever faced: Typhon.

One comment under the video:

Considering what a massive arsehole Zeus is, I'm actually surprised that hasn't happened yet.

Blue talks about Shakespeare:

RED IS WATCHING YOU BLUE

Translation: Blue horns in on Red's territory.

The Tragedies of Darth Plagueis the Wise is my favourite Shakespeare play.

Though I have to admit, Blue was a bit too lenient on Richard III there.

While he wasn't the murdery-happy hunchback Shakespeare depicted him as, he's still considered the most likely culprit for the disappearance of the Princes in the Tower . And even if you don't believe him to have murdered him - like his modern day fanclub does - he still stabbed his deceased brother in the back to usurp the throne.

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Apr 26th 2020 at 10:13:14 AM

Didn't they found children skeletons in some tower that could be belong to his nephew?

Yes, and they did a test on them a long time ago.

They could do a more reliable one today to remove all doubts, but that would require exhuming them again and the Queen has said no to that.

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Apr 26th 2020 at 1:36:19 PM

"write what you know" conversation

True, but that's the problem. It's never that people DON'T know what they're writing about, but that they *think* they know what they're writing about. It's also a problem that there's so much published misinformation (when then feeds itself as they cite each other) that some people genuinely don't realize that they don't know something.

Does that make sense?

Today's episode is a Trope Talk episode about sequels, where Red discusses what she thinks can and doesn't work when writing different types of sequels.

She brings up Frozen 2 and the Star Wars sequel trilogy in this episode. With Frozen 2, she likes how the film creates a further character arc for the two sisters and also feels like the sequel makes the first film look like a narrative midpoint, which she feels is impressive.

With the Star Wars sequel trilogy, she brings up the trouble of balancing "plot time" with "down time," and how not balancing those things well can make it seem like characters don't do all that much after whatever big event their story ended on.

Edited by dragonfire5000 on May 1st 2020 at 9:27:52 AM

She also hammers home how splitting up great relationships for drama purposes is annoying as heck.

why did she split up DB and DBZ instead of DB and DBS

She also hates the Protagonists are TERRIBLE parents options

which tends to go hand in hand with Breaking up an established relationship.

Edited by FrozenWolf2 on May 1st 2020 at 11:18:53 AM

Protagonist been bad parent is kinda true for Goku. Like Goku never know what a parent suppose to do to begin with. Heck he doesn't understand what marriage is.

I don't mind it... if there's a specific reason for it. If its just generic "Old Protag wants adventure and not domestic life" I'm not down. I'd rather it be a normal... parental character flaw. Like not sure how to talk to each other and relate or a massive difference of interests or something. Something... actually relatable.

Wait, how long does it take to make these videos?

Blue talks about Meiji Restoration:

A new Miscellaneous Myths episode is out. Today Red talks about that one time Loki cut off Sif's hair, which led to a bunch of dwarves crafting a bunch of stuff for the gods, including a certain hammer.

Moral of the story is that Loki really doesn't know when to keep his mouth shut.