A Trope I Like, or In Which I Am Irksomely Californian

My reason not to be productive this week: fucking TVTropes. That is to say, my D&D group referenced the “Reason You Suck Speech,” thanks to an excellent one our gnome gave to a leader of the libertarian centipede Elder Evil cult, and then I went to read about those, and…things escalated.

In particular, things escalated to the Fate/whatever version of the Nasuverse: to wit, a franchise whose major deal is summoning different versions of historical/legendary/fictional characters to fight each other and save the world and probably sleep with. (The original two had adult-style dating sim elements going on. Yes, I want to play them.)

I dig this sort of thing. Not so much for the Nature of Fiction meditations or whatever, that’s a bit too Consensus Reality (which I hate) for my tastes, but excuses to bring characters from multiple different works or realities together are great. Back in my MUSHing days, I was on a game that used this premise as a result of Mystic Portals, I really liked the Sandman and Swamp Thing arcs where the other members of the DC Universe eyed goings on all “…the actual *hell*?” and I’m a fan of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, even the doofy movie version.

That said…okay, this was also the week when the Snyder Cut came out. And first of all, if you’re out in the dating world, I’d recommend adding Snyder to Rand, Card, Tarantino, Fight Club and Catcher In the Rye as fandoms that are instant disqualifiers unless you get some good up-front explanation. These works aren’t all bad (okay, Rand’s are) but people who are really into them, particularly when those people are cis white dudes? Almost always are.

But also, Snyder’s take on superheroes is extremely joyless and gets worse when the heroes in question interact. Not unlike some of the more infight-y Marvel arcs/MCU movies, like Civil War, the main motivation (other than Everything Is Grimdark and You Suck For Wanting It Otherwise) seems to be the sort of “who would win if X fought Y” debate you got in Stand by Me, or on rec.games.frp.dnd when I was young and the Earth had yet to cool. YKIOK and all, I guess, but when YK is dominating the trajectory of an entire franchise, I think the rest of us get to be a little grumpy about that.

I’m not some kind of violence-averse hippie: I would put my books up against any romance novelist’s work on the market when it comes to the number of people who end up messily dead. Stephen King is one of my favorite non-romance writers. I even like a number of fight scenes in movies–albeit many of the current ones seem designed to mostly show off people’s skills at CGI and are excessively long for my middle-aged self, and I prefer stuff like “Dr. No” where it’s quick and brutal–but those fight scenes have to have context and meaning, or at least dialogue.

For example: Lord of the Rings, the movies. The Charge of the Rohirrim is all about a sort of triumphant hopelessness, it comes at a significant point in the narrative, it reunites people, and it changes the plot. Sam’s fight against Shelob is pure horrific desperation and love for Frodo. The fucking Warg attack on the way to Helm’s Deep is just padding and an excuse to have Aragorn almost kiss his horse. Take it out and either add the Scouring of the Shire or let us go to the damn bathroom half an hour earlier.

(If they’d stopped for Legolas/Aragorn action, OTOH, I’d have been fine with it. Sex doesn’t have to have meaning but fights do.)

With the Civil War stuff, and the Batman v. Superman movie, we’re obviously not talking about padding here per se, since the fighting is the entire basis of the films…but still, the plot feels mostly like an excuse to have the fights. The characters get warped accordingly. (To be fair, I know the Civil War stuff is sort of a comic thing, but it’s one of my main issues with Marvelverse’s take on mutants/superheroes: they get used as a metaphor for civil rights, and I can see how that works, but then the writing forgets that gay people AFAIK cannot blow up the Sun when they’re in a bad mood, so the “government can never interfere/keep tabs on/etc people who are actually incredibly dangerous” plot points come out, and make zero sense.) Similarly, in Avengers, the Tony/Steve mutual snark is great, the fight with Hulk makes sense, but the Cap/Thor fight either didn’t need to happen or it didn’t need to be nearly as long as it was, except Ooh Who Would Win If.

At that point, just have the Thor: Ragnarok gladiator fight, which was fun. Because I may be willing to endure twenty minutes of basically sportsball, but I get surly about being expected to take it seriously.

I don’t care who wins in the Massive Crossover universes–at least, not for competition reasons, because the answer (just like with the endless Elminster v. Raistlin debates of my excessively online childhood) is always “it depends.” It depends in-universe on the situation, and it depends out of universe on who’s writing and what story they want to tell. Pretending anything else…well, YKIOK, again, but I’m not paying twenty bucks for it.

The interesting bits come in the dialogue, in what interaction with Universe A tells Character B about themselves and vice-versa, in putting a character into a situation that’s outside their previous context but has just enough in common to be applicable or resonant. They’re in the quiet moments, the conversations about how Rupert Giles and Mike Hanlon handle the responsibility of drawing people into a battle against supernatural evil.

…shit, I may be kind of a hippie.