thinking about the importance of origins and backstory

Aug 25, 2011 16:14

Over at Comics Alliance, one of the main writers began his positive review for the new digital comic version of Batgirl: Year One with the following words:

"I'm skeptical of origin stories, particularly ones for characters that are decades old. I mean, honestly -- who cares? Are the specifics that important? Superman is going to be the same ( Read more... )

bloggers, origins

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kiffie August 25 2011, 20:30:25 UTC
So to answer Mr. Brothers' hypothetical question: it's me. I care.

( ._.)/\(._. )

This high five, it is for you.

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yaseen101 August 25 2011, 21:49:19 UTC
I'm pretty much in agreement with you here.

I think it was the first Digimon series that instilled the love of character development, back stories and character interactions for me. It's been years since I last saw it but I still have vivid memories of it.

For me, while I love deep character stuff and insight I also love a bit formular being used in story. Because at the end of day, I feel that a series has to hit home what it is about whether by beating up the bad guy through some sort of shonen upgrade or maybe the character figures out something and gets to work on doing what he does best and does it magnificently perhaps with a little poignancy added at the end.

I like mindless action, only if the story and writer accepts that it's mindless action. Con Air was a delightful movie that was a dumb action movie that hardly tried to dispute that fact ( ... )

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ext_545621 August 29 2011, 19:19:04 UTC
First of all, there’s only so many stories that can be told in this world - I mean, we’re capable of being original and inventive, but whatever brilliant storyline you tell, whether it be an epic saga spanning seven books or a flash fiction, has probably been told a hundred times before. So, it’s the details and characters that make a story engaging, rather than plot. I’d even say character is everything to good storytelling. Just for an example, I absolutely adore The Catcher in the Rye, even though practically nothing happens in the entire book and it’s a bit of a storyless story, because the characters are so engaging and you become that involved with them. I find the same with old films from the 40’s-60’s - they relied a lot more on characters whom you could engage with and had a lot more humanity to them, rather than modern films which often feel like a series of set pieces rather than stories. So, having established that to have a good story, you need good, well-written characters ( ... )

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