The Most Basic Rule of Story Telling is the one that No One Knows
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- Опубліковано 17 тра 2023
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My arcane video: • The Most Basic Rule of...
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I don’t agree with the logic of “stories aren’t real so theres no way to fact check them” if an author establishes something in their story and then later changes it without any explanation or a very flimsy one then yes it’s a plot hole. Because it doesn’t logically make sense in the context of the story that the writer created. The way you “fact check” a story is see what’s been established and foreshadowed or revealed. If it’s consistent then it’s not a plot hole. But when new thing just pop up in a story that have no explanation and wasn’t previously established. Then it’s a plot hole. Twist endings are not plot holes and usually clues are left through out the story that paints a complete picture at the end. (Foreshadowing)
Sorry if this is a bit rambly but, I think a better way to think of it is in the terms of Occam's razor. If a writer establishes something eg. "only way to kill the death star is through a small vent port" and then shows something else that appears to contradict that eg. "Light speed nuke through ship", there are multiple possible ways to think about it. Maybe there is a logical reason it works here, but didn't work there. Maybe that inconsistency is a setup to some future event that will cause the two to make sense together, a contradiction that brings about a plot twist. Maybe there's magic goblins that cast a spell that prevented it from working. Or maybe, it was just bad writing that wasn't thought through. The most likely here seems to be the latter, so it feels bad. If there was a payoff to that dissonance in some sort of twist, or the dissonance is explained in the media, even the same event can feel not like a plothole despite still contradicting a past connection, but since there is no obvious solution to this and any solutions that are presented are more far fetched than "the writers just didn't think about it", it feels like a plothole. Fundamentally though, plot holes and plot twists are formed on the same basis: You introduce things that aren't logically consistent, and then you can make them become logically consistent retroactively or cast doubt on that inconsistency beforehand, but if you do neither and people watching or reading feel it is inconsistent for no reason, they will either try to fill in those gaps themselves with reasonable solutions, or default to the writers just making a mistake, at which point immersion is broken and it feels shitty.
If you see a shot of someone at home and then a shot of them in the car, you can intuit that they must have gotten into the car between the transition. If you see someone at home and then suddenly they're in a space war with alien lasers, you can still assume something happened between those two points, make up whatever story you want, but it doesn't directly follow, it doesn't intuitively make sense. The issue is, the bar for what makes intuitive sense varies from person to person. Maybe the death star, being a more stationary vessel compared to most starships, had some kind of ftl jammer would cause it not to work, and assuming as much makes the story work so okay sure, it won't feel like a plot hole to people who think that makes sense, but to other people it still *will* feel that way because it isn't an intuitive step there. Sometimes a plot hole goes unnoticed by someone entirely because the incongruity isn't enough to matter unless you're specifically looking for it. Do characters acting outside how they normally would, is that a plot hole? If one person reads it as completely out of character and another reads it as a response to trauma or something else, who is right? Is the plot hole real or not? It's entirely subjective in that way, so saying "this story has a plothole" isn't necessarily true, because it's not as much a property of the thing itself as it is a response to the thing in the viewer. I think that's what they mean anyway. As they said though, some stories do just have incredibly weak connections or ones that undermine other connections without a satisfying connection in return, so in a sense you could call that a plot hole, but it's hard to separate subjectivity and objectivity from the experience of media.
I don't think he disagrees, his point is that stories are based around their connections, so if the connections don't connect then that's a problem and thus a plot hole.
And the lacking of this information kill naruto
Yes, untill that diehard fan on the internet explains everything with their fan theory and called it canon at least for them. I get ur point, but trying to convince some diehard fans is always useless
It's not just that plot holes are a lack of a connection. Real plot holes _actively undermine or invalidate_ existing connections without replacing them with an equivalent or better one, therefore leaving a huge hole in the plot where there was substance before.
An empty plain does not hurt for a lack of trees, while a field of stumps definitely does. The grander the forest was, the more painful it is to see the stumps.
I was actually flipping back and forth if I wanted to call it a flaw or not. I probably should have said "inherently" a flaw and defined a flaw more like this. This and another comment kinda put that into words for me
@@Uniquenameosaurus doesn't the fact that flip flopping on the idea that calling plot holes a flaw or not, cement its subjective though?
@@NCemloen haven't watched the vid, because I haven't seen the arc yet, as I am waiting for it to finish airing so I can slam through it in a day. What I would say though, is that flip flopping isn't necessarily a proof of something being subjective. It can be a simple quandary as to how to word a concept in a concise, clear manner, without leaving room for doubt or simple routes to a counter argument, especially when dealing with matters that, while not necessarily subjective, are adjacent to things that are.
@@NCemloen
It's only subjective in that one person may not care about the quality of the writing, while others do.
The same way one person is happy with a Bic Mac, but another won't settle for something so low nutritionally.
We can objectively study the quality something is constructed. With food, the density of nutrients and calorie-to-filler-to-nutrient ratio. The same goes for stories, except with them the standard is logic-to-payoff-to-duration ratio.
Too many payoffs with not enough time or logic equals what amounts to sugar. Too much duration amd both the logic and payoff are diluted too much for either to take hold. Focus too much on logic and you can end up with a documentary rather than a story.
this is also kinda why i see there as 3 major types of plothole
ones that dont matter because everything elts is so bad they are eather unavoidabe, cant cause a problem that stands out, or somehow make it better
ones that matter because whats around them is otherwise so good they hurt the story
and ones that dont matter because they are minor and the story is good enough to make up for it.
altho in reality its more a spectrum between too small to matter and big enough to break everything on the x axsis, and quality of surroundings on the y that actualy controls where it falls into
The dream sequence of the Mugen Train Arc isn't boring because they are ultimately inconsequential. They're boring because they compromised the pacing. The dreams have thematic relevance to the arc and are even something the villain actively used against Tanjiro during their fight.
That, and the dreams represent the sweetness and rest of unconsciousness. Each character dreams about what they most desire, and therefore allows the story to take stock of where each character is at emotionally.
It fucking BROKE MY HEART to realize that Kyojuro was the only one whose dream contained exactly the same hardships he used to face in real life. His father is still an alcoholic, even though he used to be a kind and caring soul to both Kyujuro and his brother Senjuro. All Kyojuro wanted in the world was to tell his father he became a Hashira and to have his father accept him, but in his dream his father still curses him out and iirc throws his bottle of sake at him. His mother is still dead as she is in real life; Tanjiro’s father doesn’t come back to life in his dreams bc he died when Tanjiro was still little and he had plenty of time to accept and process the loss, but the rest of Tanjiro’s family comes back, including Nezuko as a last resort when the demon realizes he’s too close to questioning his environment and waking up from the dream.
Kyojuro, EVEN IN HIS DREAM, which represents what he most desires, has to kneel down and console his little brother when he asks if their father acknowledged him as a Hashira.
Anyone who has anything negative to say about Demon Slayer had better be ready to duel me in pistols at dawn; I have 2 degrees in English and a lifetime of expertise in childhood trauma. FIGHT ME IF YOU DARE.
@@high-bi-password I've read your last sentence with Scruffy's voice in my head.
The dream sequence is bad bc it does not make sense
@@high-bi-password I actually somehow never realized that, that just betters Kyojuro's character so much more. Ty
@@high-bi-password "I have 2 degrees in English and a lifetime of expertise in childhood trauma"
I have never read a more metal sentence in my life
While I think the writing is super flawed I really appreciate how the protagonist acknowledges the horror and lack of agency that comes with becoming a demon and has empathy for them even if he has to put them down.
I wish that was a part of more series with monsters like this.
It's especially harrowing with Akaza and his backstory imo. Dude finally got a whiff of happiness then got fucked over even harder than before.
The writing certainly has flaws, especially near the end. But the characters tend to compensate it's flaws.
Personally, I think Demon Slayer’s use of sympathy to be very flawed. Like you’ll have demons acting extremely sadistic, show that it’s not an inherent part of being a demon via friendly demons, but at the same time Tanjiro will sympathize with them. To me there’s a massive disconnect there, as if the story refuses to acknowledge the former, but to each his own.
@@thecod2345 the only demons who show no malice are those who gained enough will power to endure it, and pretty much all demons have a tragic backstory which functions as path to their downfall. Tanjiro doesn't know the full story, but he senses it because of his acute perception (which is also related to his non self state), so he, knowing demons are corrupted and not born evil, feels compassion to them.
He's supposed to represent a near Buddha human. In fact the state of non self, or void, is often correlated in Japanese culture to enlightened.
Him feeling compassion to even the nastiest wretch makes sense when you understand he's not the average shounen hot headed protagonist. He's literally an enlightened swordsman.
@@thecod2345 i mean, they still fucking murder the demons though. they don't get redemptions
One of the most sweet things I've seen in a while is when we see swordsmith guy super swole and muscular, and then we're explained that he blames himself for the sword breakings, and swore to train harder and become stronger and a better blacksmith so he could craft Tanjiro a sword that doesnt breaks resulting in him dying.
It's a dumb visual gag that also gives you a LOT of depth of about swordsmith guy, and about the culture of the village. We get told explcitiy by Tanjiro that both the swordsman and the swordsmiths are fighting the same war. But it was swordsmith guy being worried about Tanjiro dying because a fault in his blacksmith skill, and seeing how he turned that into dedication and training is top shonen writting.
I'm not a writer but I've learned a very similar thing when planning for DnD.
Especially in DnD it's really good to throw out a lot of elements early on, give yourself a arsenal to pull from and put together.
I find this is a really good way to make use of throw away information that just exists to fill a blank.
Thar way when you run out of ideas or the plot takes a turn you didn't expect you have lots of peices to fit into places.
That is exactly what I do. Early on in a campaign I try to plant as many interesting little plot threads that I can. Later on I can turn one of those seemingly insignificant details into a major thread and the players mind's are blown while also not noticing the half dozen other threads that I left behind.
@@legomacinnisinc That's literally how I write, too!
Probably because it isnt relevant and we can assume that those rules apply to outside the setting.
@@legomacinnisinc It works really well because it's basically applying the Barnum effect like an horroscope or a cold reader would (using the fact that our cognitive biases tend to look for connection between things and overlook irrelevant details, you gives statements with details that seem specific but you could end up using in just about any situation and the reader will be persuaded that the initial statements were 100% tailored to the latter reveal).
Spamming your players with factions and characters (Use visual, audible and personality elements.) is a very good strategy, especially when players think they have found a weird plothole. :)
Your discussion of plot as connected events is great. It really goes to show why in other media, Retcons or otherwise ignoring previously established canon causes a backlash. It's denying that those events occured.
I feel like a lot of retcons are fine, and which fix problems that were in the story.
The thing is, connections in themselves aren't characteristically perfect, by which I mean the existence of a connection does not automatically deserve engagement.
The thing about creativity is that its spontaneous, quick and fascinating for it. Things in a creative work can be so quickly valued across the whole spectrum of opinion in the same writing think-tank session. Some ideas may get rejected purely because they are not compatible with a current story, but they may completely work well in an alternate or 'retconned' story. Some of these ideas may be successful enough to cause a retcon.
But I do see you were stating a fact that 'backlashes happen because of breaks in established facts' which I guess is a more neutral point than what I was responding to, but I'll defend myself with the secondary motive of understanding myself why retcons might happen and how they're not automatically bad for existing.
Plot wise it's extremely generic for the most part, but the sincerity in which the story is told I feel helps explain why it's so popular. Having a great adaptation also helps, but the popularity was high even before the anime.
I've heard people express the original manga art is bad, and while it's not on the level of Berserk or Vagabond or Vinland Saga, it's unique and recognizable. Ultimately it's just a taste thing. My only real problem is that there's a lot of same face syndrome, like characters related to each other look like clones and it was really distracting especially with the Tanjiro lookalike from the inherited memory.
The generic plot is part of why it's so popular. Ufotable has been giving good animation to Type Moon works with better source material for years yet has nowhere near the global mass appeal due to telling more niche stories.
a kind of unfortunate thing is that modern anime is very same face syndrome.
If you watch Hikari no Ou, that's really great because people's faces can vary a lot.
@@GameFuMaster I guess it becomes more noticable with less generic art styles. But you're absolutely right. Specifically for Demon Slayer, almost everyone has the same head shape and jawline. The only characters I can think of that have even slightly different head shapes are Uzui and Gyomei, and even then it's really subtle.
@@GameFuMaster bruh you haven’t seen same face syndrome until you’ve read Saint Seiya, which was from the 80s. Specifically the manga as I think the anime fixes the problem.
Tsutomo nihei and leiji Matsumoto who are great storytellers suffer from this but really did we read or watch the same anime?
The story is simple, for sure, but the execution man... it's some good stuff
I agree. Demon slayer is somewhat average but the presentation is great. anime or manga, regardless.
Demon slayers story has never been anything special but god damn is the animation the best I’ve seen in a long time
@@nolanwalker610 I agree but as I've said what matters most is the execution. Gyutaro's backstory will forever hit me hard like a truck, it's relatable as hell even if it's simple. Entertainment District was just so good, Winter 2022 was a great time to be an anime fan
@@themoviecritic1092 i absolutely agree. Daki/Ume and Gyutaro’s backstory made me emphasize with them, same with Rui in season 1 and many others in the manga as the demons are incredibly human characters that I can see parts of myself in. Entertainment district was hands down my favorite piece of anime ever and now I’m so hyped for the future of Demon Slayer and anime
Simple doesn't mean bad, simplicity can be amazing but trying to be super complex from a simple story can definitely spur a lot of issues.
There is an interesting debate in Demon Slayer fandom that never been solved or clarified by the author.
"Why Muzan never left Japan? Are there other demons outside of Japan?"
If the story takes place in Edo period or much older ,that isn't issue. But Demon Slayer is taken place in Taishō period, (1912-1926) when Japan was connected to the rest of the world and ships and planes were fast enough to cross the ocean overnight and go to China and Japanese occupied Korean peninsula.
Maybe the author just want to make a fun action story and
don't want to touch the politically sensitive aspects of that era.
more like how and why are demons kept under wraps when they can literally level entire towns.
Wouldn't it be better if people knew that demons existed and so would look out for them?
From his monologued at the beginning of this season I assume is because of what he says about stagnation, and how ultimately he doesn't want change in the world, (I have not read the Manga so Idk why he wants this) going around the world and scaring the population would go against his wish. I guess
@@GameFuMaster I mean, literally one ray of sunlight can kill every demon in the show. They can't exactly be careless.
@@RevolutionaryLoser I mean why is the demon slayer corps a "secret organization", when the dangers of the demons are so high?
@@GameFuMaster It's not really secret. They've tried going public but nobody believes demons are real. I think this was covered in the first few episodes.
It's secret in that the location of their bases is secret.
12:43 not Tanjiro's father, Tanjiro's ancestor from a couple hundred years ago
I guess that whole idea of connections might be one of the reasons that I'm so invested in stuff like the lore in Fromsoftware games, especially Elden Ring. Almost everything you look at in that game is strongly connected to everything else.
How
I feel the oposite. There are never 2 npcs interacting with each other with you present. I got pissed at elden ring when in volcano manor I was just practically delivering a conversation between 2 chracters, it feels like the world doesn't move without you and that made me not really give a shit about anything that happened in the world.
@@Paradox1012 That's fair. Npc's never really interact with each other in Fromsoftware games except in Sekiro. However, I was mostly talking about lore connections.
@_2fcd_978 that's why I think sekrio is thier best game. Lore should be built off of chracters and not the other way around IMO. all the Xenoblade games are an excellent example of this. If you can get invested in chracters, it automatically gets you invested in the world. I feel like the souls series operates by an oposite logic on most occasions and it just makes me feel like those chracters don't matter.
'I've finally done it guys, I've turned all of you into horrific monsters in eternal pain, overthrown the system and made myself god, nothing can go- who tf is this old man?'
'Hello would you like to hear about our Lord and Saviour the Saint of the Deep?'
Something that, as a comic writer, I think will really help people tighten up their plots is writing comic scripts, even if you never intend to make a comic. It's because you need to write out everything in every panel. Once you're forced to think about the objects in the scene, the placement of the characters, the time of day, literally everything, you'll have to consider WHY you're including all these elements and if you can find a way to make it better. You want the main character's bathroom to be in view? Why? Simply because he's standing in front of it? That's weak. Maybe you can see his ex girlfriend's toothbrush (which she used in the first chapter, before they broke up) sitting next to his on the sink. It's a detail that your reader probably won't notice, but it helps you learn how to make intentional choices. Now that's just an example I made up on the spot, but you can see where I'm going with it, right?
Yes, you are correct on a metal textual level. "Plot holes do not exist" but that would assume that there is not a teleology to the words on the page.
Because when you are writing a story you are trying to elicit certain emotional and logical responses from your reader. Because that's how communication work and story is in its essence communication from Creator to Audience.
When you're in an argument with a friend and your logic doesn't make sense that is the equivalent of a plot in this example.
Real world context. When this arc was being written, the first season of the anime was starting to gain global traction. When anime for manga get popular, the artists tend to rush through the story to get to the conclusion, and in this case, Gotoge didn't know (as far as I'm aware) that it was going to be such a popular IP. Which is why instead of a continued story, we have a definitive conclusion and every story in the setting is a spinoff from a different character's perspective.
I am really surprised the words "Suspension of Disbelief" didn't come up, and would also argue that stories featuring dream settings like Yume Nikki/Little Nightmares/Link's Awakening, or involving purgatory or custom-hells like Limbo/Silent Hill/a crap ton of different psychological horror stories, or even meta 'game within a game' type stories like Inscryption and the recent Prey, manage to pull off non-logical storytelling or setting building without any sort of issue relating to suspension of disbelief for very similar reasons, and to an amazing degree.
One problem is how short it is. Like half the hashira’s only show up in the last arc . And characters like Genya show up at the very end. And the thing is they wasted so much. They brought up the whole thing about the flower that could cure Muzan and they could’ve had an entire arc about that but just forgot it.
It's funny because I've had the opposite reaction. I really enjoyed the early episodes of entertainment district but I'm bored to tears with Swordsmith village. I think there're a few reasons for that.
First is setting. While it's true that the village might have more prior plot connections, it's also just a really boring place aesthetically. It's just a run of the mill village with blacksmiths in it and the secrecy aspect isn't really even used relevantly since the demons just show up unannounced anyways. It also doesn't help that all the side characters wear masks so you can't really see them emote (makes it much harder for me to get attached to them). Now the entertainment district had a ton of scenarios that were just fun and interesting. The whole infiltration schemes and getting to see Daki be a threat and have screen presence outside of fighting the main characters. That's another thing- the entertainment district feels like Daki's domain in that the villain was intrinsically connected to the setting, which in turn makes Daki and Gyutaro really distinct for me. Compare that to the two upper moons who just randomly show up. They don't interact or engage with their setting whatsoever. It makes them feel super forgettable like they're filler villains until we get to the interesting upper moons in the top 3. Obviously, I don't mean this in a powerscaling sense, but their personalities and characters don't feel particularly important in that they could've just been anything and still worked fine in their role. All the other major demon villains don't feel like this, especially Daki and Gyutaro.
Second is supporting cast. As much as I like Tanjiro, he cannot carry a dialogue scene for the life of him. Outside of the first few episodes where Tanjiro's personal story of losing his family and becoming a demon slayer was the center of the narrative, Tanjiro really relies on a strong supporting cast to bounce off of (because he's really boring just by himself). Now swordsmith started out alright with this since his interactions with Mitsuri were pretty entertaining, but she pretty much leaves and has been barely relevant for most of the season since the first episode. His relationships with any other character in the village has either been boring af or super underdeveloped. Like his relationship with Genya could've been interesting, but they barely have a coherent conversation before the actions breaks out. Compare that to all the super fun side characters in the district. Obviously Tengen and his wives were great, and I've already mentioned Daki and Gyutaro, but Zenitsu and Inosuke are pretty underrated in how their interactions make Tanjiro not boring (super missed potential in not having Kanae in Swordsmith btw I would've loved to actually get more of her character). But yeah there're a few more things I could bring up, but those are the big reasons imo that I haven't been invested in the swordsmith village arc so far.
There is one thing I really liked about the Upper Moons in Blacksmith Village. Both of them are just straight up horrible peopel.
One is just a killer artist and the other is someone who shoves the balem for his own actions of himself to such a degree he straight up believes it himself.
They are not the first demons that were just straight up bad people, but the first major ones who did not just get tainted by becoming demons. They were rotten from the start and that was a nice change.
Though them just randomly having found the village still is just silly and I would have loves at least a scene that provides how the Upper Fifth has stumbled upon it.
That Tanjiro needs a strong supporting cast comes with him essentially being the character that balances the whole cast.
If he was not that mild compared to the rest it would be difficult for any moment to stay serious. Obviously he has his own loony quirks, but these are mostly what makes him so mild and grounded. Every single character has to bounce off him in the end.
So Tanjiro can be very boring, but if he was not the conversations could really become hard to get through as all other characters are so colorful already.
This is basically my take too. I'm surprised people are saying the story was weak at the start. It wasn't strong but it was serviceable. It got FAR weaker as the series went on. As much as I fucking love the animation, boss fights aren't plot and they can only carry the story so far. I fully agree that the entertainment district arc, while superficially similar to sword smiths village is actually much more interesting due to the setting, and the atmosphere. It's a murder mystery at the start so it doesn't need fights every episode.
When the swordsmith village arc turned out to be ANOTHER all boss battle season I lost almost all interest. Honestly if the plot was weak in the first season it has become practically nonexistent. Plot comes from personality conflict and character development. In this season we got basically no character development except near the absolute end where Tanjiro gives up Nezuko for the greater good. There's a tiny bit of character development for the mist hashira but that's basically meaningless because we don't even know who he is properly so it doesn't leave much of a impression. People need to go back over the show and see how they basically used flashbacks to flesh out the characters in the middle of the fucking action. Why? Because they refused to create any build up in the episodes before it. At least in Entertainment district arc they spent decent amounts of time building up Tengen. It's for that reason that despite his very logical explanation of how swordsmith village has more plot connections, I still feel like it was by far the weakest of all seasons.
I'm probably an older fan so no shade to the kids but I now watch shows for the characters and plot. Fights aren't the only kind of action you can have in anime, and the best stories can have amazing episodes and be exciting without a single fight in the episode. Drama is, ultimately, the source of the fun. I can prove it because if you imagine cutting out all the exposition and build up, literally all of it, you have no idea who these characters are, would you care about the fights? Of course not. You're watching some guy fight a demon and it looks cool. But it has no meaning because you don't know who he is. That's why the increasing focus on boss battles to the exclusion of everything else is so disappointing. And it means that despite all the connections this season felt empty because the character storylines didn't progress in a meaningful way.
Personally I think the anime was a good opportunity to flesh out the story and fill in the plot holes left by the manga. It's a shame they decided not to take that opportunity. It's risky, but I think it would have been great.
19:55
No no, that's not a plot hole or an issue where the story hasn't provided all its info yet. That's you failing to grasp basic information. We've been provided what Tanjiro's father looked like, and this dude while sharing some traits in appearance does not look like Tanjiro's father. The mark on his face isn't even the same.
Plot holes do exist. Even if they can be explained later on, it's still a plot hole until that happens. It's not neccesarily a negative.
With the Hyperspace Ram, it was a plot hole in TLJ (since it contradicts previous films), and then the explanation in TROS didn't make sense since it implies Holdo was trying to run away but fucked up since there was a tiny chance of it working.
Dude I love Demon Slayer but your idea of having most of the upper moons destroying the whole village and making the swords more valuable to keep sounds more better than we actually received. The potential of having all of the Hashiras show up to the village to save what is still left from like Upper moon 2-4 would been a crazy battle of survival too!
About your whole plot-hole thing... you have a point, but there's another, arguably more important perspective.
As an artist, let me just say that it is the artists job to tell/explain the story to the their readers/watchers/fans. If they're confused, it's probably your fault. If you happen to have readers/whatever who are willing to put in a bunch of effort to figure out your story, that's incredible, and you're blessed. But you shouldn't assume that or expect it. If you aren't explaining something well enough, or if you didn't think something through enough, and it ends up causing confusion or breaking immersion for a significant percentage of your audience, that's a both a problem, and a mistake that you the artist made.
Can you explain everything to everybody? No, of course not. There will always be people who just think in weird ways, or who make connections you didn't through no fault of your own, or who just weren't paying enough attention to pick up the pieces. It's not about being perfect, it's about being good enough. In the same way that some readers/watchers/fans will put work into figuring out and solving plot holes, some will put a lot of work into searching for them or creating them. But just because this is a spectrum problem doesn't mean it isn't real.
In my opinion, Plot Holes are most common with the creating artist doesn't treat their own world/characters as being real, or gets lazy and doesn't put in the thought and effort needed to tell a good story. The sloppier the storytelling, the easier it is to pick apart and point out plot holes. Try to occasionally step outside of the story you're trying to tell and give the characters a moment to make their own decisions. If you treat your characters as genuine individuals (instead of as tools to make your story happen) and the worlds as a breathing, reactive, lived-in place (instead of just a... doll-house or skybox), you'll probably find most of the issues that would become plot holes before you get to the point of showing your art to someone else. And then be able to fix them, creating a more grounded and well-considered piece of art in the end.
What a fantastic comment! As a creator myself I can corroborate these statements.
Something I worry about a lot is striking a balance between over- and under- explaining things. On one hand, I don't want to insult my audience's intelligence by explaining things that one could infer through what I've already wrote (showing, not telling) but on the other I'm the writer so I already know everything and I could have a blindspot on what the reader themselves would know, so if they're confused it's because I took for granted information that was supposed to be part of the story. Which is why beta readers are amazing and I love them lol.
I can't agree. I will explain in simple terms. (I do like your comment though)
*Deep breath* It falls in this very same line of thinking. As a game developer, one has a duty to challenge players but allow them to see the story/game through. So, what, you make it easy? If we all had this mindset, Dark Souls would not be the genre defining juggernaut that it is. It's different strokes for different folks. Sometimes a complicated or intelligent story is needed. And how far do you dumb down your product for the lowest common denominator? That is to say, dumb people. What you gain in dumb people you lose in intelligent people and frankly I'd have to ask the merit in producing such a product.
It is of course, a fine line. You don't want to create a game that's insanely hard (Boshy) nor a product too smart for too many readers (Kind of Silmarillion).
Similarly you don't want an easy game cause no one will take it seriously, nor a dumb story because people will lose interest.
Of course, your second paragraph is apt but wasn't thorough enough for me to not want to make this comment, heh.
I agree with the last paragraph and that's the way I'm writing. I'd love to write like some books, and like AoT that he referenced where "it was all planned from the beginning" but I can't do that because essentially the story I am writing I wrote some rules for the world, the geo-political map, religions and other shakers like that, some organizations, and then a bunch of characters who have their own personalities and motivations and basically I just write them as they would attempt to both survive in the world as well as solve their problems. The problems I gave them will make the plot flow, so it isn't boring. They just naturally exist and they react to things as they would, rather than as they would as plot devices. The only contrived element is where they "start". But that never begs the question in the same way you don't care much who your friend's parents are when you're 25, just that you have a friend. The same way I don't need to explain how a land mass forms, unless it was unnatural.
@@RuneKatashima Yeah agreed, thats the only portion I disagreed with because I used to have this belief as well and would stress over explaining things to the audience because I felt as though not doing so was lazy. which led me to automatically make games generally for younger audiences on accident.
Roguelite games for example, a main staple of them is generally giving little information. This original comment would effectively be calling that poor, or at the fault of the author. I used to think this as well, until I realized that it’s not so black and white.
The rules for a story are really only defined by genre norms and target audiences, and even then you still can tow the line quite a bit. Doing so will generally stick your story out above the rest like for example, Hunter x Hunter among shounen.
Where the nuance ends is just non-genre specific things like for example what OP said like plotholes, unexplained or hastily built solutions (dues ex machina), etc.
Although one could also argue dues ex machina are fine in certain circumstances such as a gag stories or comedy.
@@RuneKatashima I find what really helps me with 'it was planned all along' is when I'm making said characters who drive the plot, I design them to have personalities and motivations which will have them acting in such a way that they *do* push things to where they're eventually supposed to be. Need the main character to get over a habit of rolling over for authorities? Well, here comes the corrupt cop that is going to keep pushing and pushing until something has to give. Possibly alongside another character, likely an ally, who will put up with shit, but to a lesser extent than the MC, to give them an example to learn from.
Of course, you probably don't want to introduce them right next to each other because that's basically just showing your hand on exactly what's going to happen. So you throw in the ally first, under a different context, which relies on some other aspect of their character. Maybe have them tangentially related to some other conflict going on. And then the enemy comes in later, to have your cast bounce off of each other and ultimately take the plot in your designated direction.
At least, that's how I do things a lot of the time.
Huh, you actually put into words something that's core to my favorite stories.
I've always said I really like it when stories feel like they're "planned to the point they're inevitable" What this means is, I really like it when the motivations of the characters and the things that are happening in the story align in such a way that you couldn't see it going down any other way.
One of my golden examples of this is the comic Visions of the future. There, every single thing that happens puts into motion what happens next, like a bunch of dominones falling down, you can draw a perfect logical line from the family being created to the mother being attacked to the mother killing the attacker to the neighbor using the attack as blackmain agains the mother to the mother confronting the neighbor the neighbor's son dying to the cousin moving in with the family to him accidentaly killing the mother's son to vision attacking the avengers to the mother sacrifing herself.
Not only that, but what reaaaally makes that story feel "planned" to me, is that from the very start you get these tiny references from the narrator about what will happen later on. The story opens with a vague mention of how the neighbors will die in a fire the visions started, and that we'll only learn later happens as a direct result of the son's death, or how we're told how the cousin will die near the end.
I used to think I liked it because it made the story feel "inevitable", I liked the references to what will happen in the future because the inevitability made the tragedy all the more tragic, and I think that's still partialy true, but now that you bring up the idea of connection, I think what's even more important to get that feeling of "planned" is that not a single element goes wasted, and the references to what happens in the future aren't just interesting because they tell us what will happen and that it's inevitable, but because they promise a future connection.
If when we're told about the neighbors' death we were told they'll die in five days in a car accident, that wouldn't actually help to the story feeling tigh, even if it gave a sense of inevitability to their deaths, it would just distract from the main story. But instead, we're told they'll die when one of the visions sets fire to their house (Which we only learn later on was an accident caused by the son's death) The neighbors never come up again after that other than in a panel where we see the house indeed caught fire and a very brief mention later on, but because we're promised that connection from the start, and because it eventually comes in a way that totally suverts our expectations, it's memorable.
In fact, the moment where the house caughs on fire is very very memorable only because we were told at the start that would happen. If the house had just caught on fire without being foretold about it, we wouldn't care about it at all. It's a small panel, the story doesn't call attention to it when it actually happens, but because it connects to information you had before, it actually made me gasp the first time I read it. it makes the neighbors feel important to the theme somehow, even though they're really throwaway characters that only show up once.
Likewise, in the tour of the house on the very first issue we're shown: 1. The piano that'll be used by the cousin and will end up causing the son's death. 2. The lighter used by vision to escape the force field that's put around the house, and 3. The vase the mother uses to kill herself. The vase specially is referenced a couple of times through the story as people wonder why it is empty and are told it's because it's poisonous. It's because of those constant callbacks to the vase that when the mother kills herself with it, it doesn't just make sense, but actually feels deeply poetic and tragic. Everything affects everything else because everything is connected, and thats why it feels "planned to the point it's inevitable" and that's why I love the story.
Anyway go read visions of the future by tom king. I promise it doesn't matter I spoiled it, it's the kind of story you can read over and over and just keeps getting better with each re read.
I swear this channel continues to be a brilliant guide to effective writing. Thanks for the amazing insight! If I ever were to produce my own series, I'll have to keep the idea of "connection" at the forefront. You are 100% right in reference to the dopamine hit we receive when readers/viewers have that "oh wait a minute!" moment. Evoking those kinds of reactions I imagine is so fun for writers.
I love it when writers leave room to explore possible connections later and deliver
12:40 Small correction. That wasn't Tanjiro's father, but rather an ancestor in the Kamado family. You can see he doesn't have a mark on his forehead despite Tanjiro stating in s2 that his father was born with the mark while he himself wasn't.
One factor I've been thinking about in my own writing is the threshold an element in a story needs to reach for a connection to become meaningful. Looking at the Demon Slayer example, Akaza was originally introduced in much the same way as the Pot or Emotion demons. While he had the novelty of being the first upper moon we'd encountered, he was also a total stranger with no prior connections outside of Muzan. But after leaving a strong first impression and killing a major character, people are already looking forward to his return and the connections that might come with it.
Similarly, if the Pot and Emotion demons were to be defeated without much fanfare or accomplishment and then later we find out the emotion demon is Muzan's son or something, have we actually generated any intrigue from this connection? Or does the character not carry enough weight for it to mean anything? Perhaps that's not an issue with the demons' characterization and more of a fact that post-mortem connections are inherently less engaging, since there are no expectations one can have for a dead character. If the Pot Demon were to kill the Mist Hashira in this arc and escape after the Emotion Demon is defeated, I could easily see it adding to the character's appeal. But I'm not sure if it would generate as much hype to see his return as Akaza's, due to the difference in how they are characterized. To me, it would feel like they were pulling him back to act as fodder for later as a way to show how the characters have grown.
To me, the strongest moment of intrigue from this show came from Muzan's introduction scene, where we find him walking around in plain view of other humans with his apparent wife and daughter, in stark contrast to every demon we'd seen up to that point. It carries the same weight as seeing a level 90 enemy after previously only seeing level 3s, and it creates massive contrast with the monster that corrupted Nezuko we might have pictured. Sadly, the more we've seen of Muzan since that intro scene, the less intriguing I've found him. One could say it's because most of Muzan's scenes since that first one have been about him chastising his underlings and showcasing generic final boss vibes. In other words, a strong lack of connection to that original sequence that captured my attention. There doesn't appear to be as much contrast with our original perception of him as I once thought, and now I have less faith that the explanation of his social status will be all that meaningful.
Showing him with another character having a completely different personality could explain the contrast between his behaviors being due to him manipulating the people around him by changing his personality accordingly, wich is what I first felt when I saw how he treated his underlings, especially after one of the Moons commented on how he changed his appearance and aura so much they didn’t recognize him at first
The lack of reoccurrence between the demons is frustrating & probably where the lack of connections fails the most. Akaza, Kokushibo, Douma and Nakime are the only four demons who genuinely break the mold of “introduced, killed, sad backstory.” AND Douma and Nakime are even stretches. Akaza meanwhile is considered one of the best characters of the series period, even more than some hashira. And Kokushibo’s mystery was well done too.
I’m not saying every demon had to break this mold, but that Akaza being the only one with an arc arc was such wasted potential especially since there were demons who had so much potential. OP’s entire idea of the swordsmith village being massacred and making the Upper Moons ALL return later would have been so cool.
This is how I felt about Enmu. Enmu had one of the best introductions in the series. Unlike Susamaru, Yahaba, Kyogai, and the other lower moons, he knew exactly how to please Muzan and was unhinged. He also was lower moon ONE and could very easily become an upper rank if he won. I genuinely thought he would become a much greater threat and actually start exploring how the Twelve Kizuki works. But nah, just died.
And on top of that his powers were used like filler like the OP said 😑
He could have challenged what we knew about the world, as in, what happens when demons climb the ranks? What did blood battles look like? How would his blood demon powers develop as he got stronger? Instead he was just killed off and the Upper Ranks stayed the same throughout the series until Muzan HAD to replace them.
So much untapped potential with the demons. It’s not just Enmu either that I could go on about this. Just… ONE demon that started off in a lower rank and became stronger as the series went on would have been so so interesting and also would have had reoccurrence.
@@Grimexx955 Fantastic comment. I felt similarly about how they dealt with the most of the villains in Jojo, using them as one-shot fodder as opposed to repurposing some of them to create lasting rivalries or having them exist as more than just obstacles to overcome. I don't have the full context in Demon Slayer since I'm anime-only, but I was pretty disappointed with Enmu getting killed in the movie by non-Hashira without accomplishing anything. It meant the Upper Moons were now the only players on the antagonist side with any meaningful power level, which felt like we were already fighting the Elite 4 after the second or third gym.
I really wanted the Upper Moons to feel like the 6 unstoppable forces that dozens have tried and failed to kill after 100+ years. Daki and Gyutaro are the closest I've seen to that so far, if only because of the logistics behind it. Beheading two powerful demons at once after one of them can sneak attack you from inside the body of the other with a deadly poison that hinders your fighting seems like it would be pretty cut and dry unless you specifically had Tenzen's poison resistance. With Gyokko, I don't really buy only 2 other Hashira managed to fight him into his true form, with both of them also losing. Hantengu is a little easier to believe, having to take out 4 different bodies and figure out the trick to find the real one, but seeing Tanjiro behead three of them in one motion leads me to believe they aren't on a level where a Hashira would struggle with them alone. The Hatred form also makes it a little more believable, but if Genya had the power to decapitate the main body, he would have been defeated before it manifested. From what I hear, those above Hantengu are in a league of their own, so I'm hoping they can feel more like Gyutaro in terms of helping me buy that they've been around for so long.
The hype around akaza's character by manga readers also played a part, i think.
Plotholes are something that storytellers should pay attention and try to correct, becayse if left unadressed they can either make something feel underutilize or it can undermine a world, the plot, the characters or the ideas the story explores.
Also reflecting on all the nuances of the rules of your story elements can present to you more ideas and opputunities to fufill the potential of your storytelling.
I think a really big example to showcase this concept is a comparison between the Phoenix Wright original trilogy, the Danganronpa games, and Zero Escape. That trio of games is a really common sequence of recommendations people make to drag you into the mystery VN rabbit hole, but imo the further down you go, the worse the games become, at least in the mystery aspect.
PWAA is a masterclass example of interconnectedness. There are tons of examples of little details or gimmicks that end up being recycled and mattering for future plots. For example, the silly Thinker clock from the very first trial plays a huge role later on. Even though it's kind of arbitrary that it was used later, it still engages the player in the story because you remember the clock because of how prominent it was. Another example, and the best one imo, is in the third game. I don't know how to explain it without spoiling, but a single prop that isn't even a piece of evidence in your inventory ends up connecting the dots for the big plot twist in THREE different ways (color, light, and obfuscation) that all click at the same time.
Danganronpa plays around with interconnected props and gimmicks between a couple of the most notable trials, but a lot of the murder plots are kind of arbitrary. As a pure mystery game, it's significantly worse than PWAA, but it still has some extremely good cases. I would say the strength is more in the characters.
Zero Escape is trash. I won't spoil it, but one of the biggest plot twists is written like the writers wanted to write a twist villain but didn't want it to be too straightforward, but instead of using any good writing conventions, they just thought of the most obscure bit of trivia they could find and threw that in as the gimmick to reveal the villain. It only really connects to one other event, which is also kind of forced, like you can tell the writers wrote backwards through the plot with the gimmick in mind instead of making everything flow naturally. Also, the number and symbol based gimmicks are really arbitrary. There's only one really good idea they had that really ties the whole game together, but one gimmick a game does not make. I don't know about the other games in the series, but I doubt it gets much better.
Oh damn, nostalgia flashback. Phoenix Wright WAS really good at this now I think of it.
God damn i wish there was a video essay showing it all off. I don't have the time to commit replay PW
Virtue's Last Reward is good in some ways, but has a bunch of things not explained that are supposed to be explained in a potential third game, and then Zero Time Dilemma just fumbled the bag hard. The writer behind the Zero Escape series is a veteran writer of 'visual novels' who loves to swing for the fences with meta twists and confuse the audience for the sake of it. It's fun but it's not for everyone, for sure. A lot of people are going to feel like he's wasted their time.
His next series, AI: The Somnium Files, is a lot tighter, though the second game has a twist that is not an in-universe twist, but only a twist in our understanding of events. Nobody but the player is tricked. In order to accomplish this trick, the writer cleverly lies by omission, over and over and over, AND sets up a bunch of plot relevant things that in retrospect explain why you, the player, were so successfully fooled. It is actually possible to guess the twist in advance, though, pretty much, so I wouldn't say it's cheating. but I wonder what the purpose was. The first AI game is a lot more straightforward, albeit with the author's pet concept involving the potential of being aware of things from other timelines playing a role on a mechanical and story level. I would say the second game's twist also ruthlessly preys on people that played the previous game to create certain assumptions. On a certain level, it's one of the most tightly engineered pieces of storytelling clockwork I've ever witnessed. But there are large chunks of the story purposefully missing that have to be filled in by implication and throwaway dialogue. The rules the author has set make certain dramatic limitations, in order to preserve the twist. and if you've played their other games/VNs, you'll notice so many tics, and repeated ideas, and even basically repeated twists.
I will say that it wraps up fairly well after the big reveal, and then there's a bigger, hidden reveal. Something opens up after you complete the game. and, if you follow that trail, everything makes simultaneously much more and much less sense. I guess it sort of contextualizes the player-deceiving twist??? kind of???? Otherwise, my biggest concern with the story is that it's not as compelling told in a sensible way, but I suppose that's the point. You're not signing up for a story you could read in a book, you're signing up for a story that can only be told as a visual novel with gameplay elements. Why I think the author of the Zero Escape and AI series is divisive is because he's honed a unique kind of storytelling that utterly relies upon the medium its in, and breaks down if analyzed through the lens of any other media. and because almost nobody else is doing the crazy shit he's doing, it's hard to analyze on its own terms.
It's funny because the first one's refreshingly straightforward, and then Nirvana Initiative is like LORD FORGIVE ME BUT I GOTTA GO BACK TO THA OLD ME.
I wouldn’t say Danganronpa is any worse a mystery than AA just that it its mysteries are different. I think the smaller cast, setting, etc mean the mysteries in DR are more stand alone and simpler than the mysteries in AA. I personally feel like AA can drop the ball sometimes as a mystery due to its reliance on deus ex machina to get the characters out of a hairy situation. Is there 1 final piece of evidence to save your client and prove the villain is the killer well just stall for 30 minutes until another character can barge in at the last moment and save you.
Its so weird hearing someone talk about this story like it isn't already finished
The connection thing is a pretty big part of why people get so excited about One Piece. Oda is a masterful storyteller, but a big part is that he always brings things back. We'll have a side character, and they'll exist, do a few things. We'll mostly forget them, and then we'll hear something about what they've been up to, or see them show back up, or have them be tied to another characters backstory
Well, Oda is a master at throwing around a lot of bits of infos and using them for something later in the plot, everyone then starts to call it foreshadowing because of that, lol. I think of it as a good writing technique.
@@paonippobemduro Agreed. There's definitely some things that are foreshadowing, but I feel like a lot of it is just him going "oh, I just remembered this character from 250 chapters ago... they can fit in here, probably," and then he makes them fit
@@christiancasaverdepertica1802 It's for reason like these that One piece is so long. The question is about how much the author is able to spread his own story by using interesting informations for his story and his audience, and use it all to make an funny and masterful story by connecting everything via the narrative. I bet that not even even 20% of the One Piece main content was made in the get go. Anyway, barely anyone makes the story before actually writing them (even the copycats are constantly reading other's materials to copy & past them on), but it's pretty hard to maintain an story if there is not an entertaining, proeminent narrative that makes sense.
Rather than connections, it's causality.
Connections is the key engagement of slice of life, which genre people say has no plot. Look at Hidamari as an example; all the little details in the background that establish the timeline are strict connections yet they don't form a "plot" per se.
Allow me to simplify, meaning is transitive. An entity is only important if it connects to other things that are important. The more important a thing is perceived to be, by some other important thing, the more important it actually is (in our minds).
A door is a door, very little importance exists for the door without context. However, if they door is the only thing keeping the horrifying thing away from the main character, the door inherits importance from the main character. The “connection” is simply the transitive nature of meaning.
very good video, i'm gonna call this the "what the hell does this have to do with anything?" effect. if you can imagine your audience asking that question in regards to some sort of scene/character/object, you should probably either have a good answer to it or just cut it entirely.
ALSO THAT THING WITH THE FOREST VIDEO ESSAY AAAAAAAAA. that's a concept that has been driving me NUTS, because sometimes i'll see people being so immersed in a game like they'll wonder what the lore explanation is for lost izalith being filled with disembodied dragon legs in dark souls 1, they'll wonder if maybe there was some sort of great purging of those creatures that resulted in most of their bodies being destroyed or whatever, and i'll look at it and just think "yeah the devs probably thought eh we'll toss some dragon legs here so it's not so empty." it's especially obvious in a game like the forest that the most likely explanation for why there's so many Seemingly Random And Incompatible Animals is just that the devs threw in a bunch of random stuff without thinking about it. it can be so hard to know whether it's logical to immerse yourself and give the benefit of the doubt sometimes. it's like how people go into good movies expecting them to be bad, so all they see are the plot holes, while other people can watch terrible movies and think they're great because they just assumed every plot hole had a sensible explanation.
i guess for me i just kinda go off of vibe. does this piece of media SEEM like something i should take seriously, or would it perhaps be foolish of me to expect great storytelling from a roblox dating sim? it also helps to have past works which have mostly stood the test of scrutiny. dark souls definitely has a lot of random nonsense in it, but it also contained enough connectivity and sensible worldbuilding for players of its sequels to assume that any plot holes likely had an explanation they simply hadn't considered yet. pretty neat!
oh, and as a side note, outer wilds is a game in which discovering story connections is literally its central gameplay mechanic, and it's one of my favorite games of all time
In case of manga to anime adaptations there are things going on that makes sense as to why some plot weirdness exists. When it comes to manga a lot of it depends on popularity and continued popularity. Some manga series were originally one shot manga. I really like Clamp manga and they are popular. Even they have they had to abandon or shorten their manga. Also because of their popularity it isn't uncommon for anime to be made during the manga's creation. Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles is easily one of the best examples of why using a work in progress is not the best idea. Not counting the OVAs as part of the anime for the reason they were made to release alongside the manga. OVAs are not part of the anime storyline.
this video reminded me of my first -and to this point only - orgasmic moment of deep connection with a plot element I ever felt, when [SPOILERS FROM THE WHEEL OF TIME BOOK SERIES] the author reuses tons of simple mechanics form previous books in the final battle of the series, culminating in one of the most epic comebacks of all time. You see, due to the end of the world approaching, there are this weird "bubbles of evil" things happening all around the world, where bizarre magical stuff goes haywire somewhere for sometime, like tools coming to life and trying to kill you, or ghosts appearing, or grain suddenly spoiling, things like that. In the beginning of one of the later books - I forgot which one - the authors needed a way to stablish that the "bubbles of evil" were worsening, signaling the incoming doom. one of the ways they did that was to have character mat cauthon, during his travels, come by a strange village of people who, due to that bubble of evil thing, become crazy blood thirsty psycho killers at night, then resurrect/respawn by the morning in their beds as if nothing had happened, kind of like they have a save point set to their beds.
so, when you first read about this encounter, you think "huh. that's a neat little bit of worldbuilding, plus a nice concept, sad it'll be the last time we'll see it tho." then you go on to read two other books I think. it's not important. The important thing is, Mat cauthon ends up becoming the general for all armies on the good guys side of the last battle against the evil forces. During the battle, one of the main strategic points is a place where a river can be diverted, opening a path for enemy forces to cross. However, to defend this very important strategic position, he conscripts the help of an assortment of random villagers, saying something about being understaffed - the author even adds an extra perspective in there talking about villagers and refugees helping to find wounded and recover arrows from the battlefield - and every other general/ experienced fighter on the field thinks this a terrible idea. after all, as soon as the 300 or so villagers are killed, the enemy will be able to build a dam and the battle is essentially lost. So halfway into the battle, after massacring the villagers, the enemy does so, diverting the river and letting massive forces start crossing, and just as all hope is lost, the sun starts to rise [they had been fighting all night] , and we cut to one of the a'shaman - mages, essentially - complaining in his head about his ridiculous, senseless orders. he had been asked to open a portal to a village, watched all the villagers get massacred trying to defend this impossible position, then told to wait till daybreak and reopen the portal. he does so, still complaining of the absurdity of such orders and how could have mat been so cruel as to let civilians be massacred so brutally. then the entire village comes out of the portal. the _same exact village_ who had just been massacred earlier. the rush the dam and explode it, massive wave of water crashing right trough the center of the advancing enemy army at the exact right moment to cause the most damage possible.
when I realized who those villagers were, I let out a whoop and laughed for like a minute. the damn authors used the BBEG mechanics against him !! so besides being a killer worldbuilding piece, establishing how the decay of the world was escalating, and having such an interesting concept that it could be it's own book, they used it in the final battle! and it's so goddamn brilliant!
One of the most obvious plot holes I've come across was in the Ant Man movie where his shrinking is explained as his atoms coming closer together, yet later he shrinks smaller than the size of an atom, which is impossible given the explanation of how he shrinks, but this video inspired me to come up with a reason this isn't a plot hole. My conclusion? The explanation was a lie. What purpose the lie serves is beyond me, but it's the only possible conclusion.
Yeah, this is the problem with coming up with explanations for plot holes. At some point, you just have to ignore literal in-universe exposition to make sense of it. Sometimes it can work when a character has an already established reason for lying/being wrong, but unless we're talking about unfinished works where this twist reveal might still happen, this happens very rarely. Once you start doubting exposition because it's not from some omniscient narrator, every established rule about the universe falls apart.
The simplest explanation is that not even Pym knows what his particles do, so he is bullshitting.
14:40 "Am I living on the equator? CAUSE EVERY SEASON IS THE FING SAME!"
Man... And I thought my puns were good.
Gotta' say, I'm reaaally glad this video was as constructive as it was (especially given the thumbnail: had me a _liiiittle_ worried eheh)
Totally agree with everything you were saying too. As much as I love this show and Tanjiro's shining goodness (as well as all the other characters too), the season 3 finale really made you feel the fatigue. Even the 2nd season had me a little on edge with how it basically killed off *all* the main characters except Tanjiro and brought them back one by one, it worked as long as you were invested, sure. But that's definitely a trick you can't keep repeating all that often.
When they did it with Nezuko I was honestly disappointed, since it was handled in such a way that made Tanjiro's choice--and perceived sacrifice in that moment--a little less impactful when they brought her back literally moments after. Plus it doesn't help that the fight was over by then, while in the Entertainment District arc, it was still going, so bringing characters back while they had that momentum going just worked better.
Demon Slayer's strength has never been it's story, but it's characters (i.e. bestest boi Tanjiro for sure), it's amazing visuals and emotion.
So anything that caters better to that, and has your mind focused on those things, rather than the straightforward-ish story, is sooo much better for the show altogether.
This is one of those things I knew, but could never put into words. Well done for giving these concepts a face.
I know you've said in the past that you don't consider themes to be all that important, but this video brought me to a realization. I feel as though your connection theory can also apply to themes. Themes can be an intangible tie which even more closely binds things that are already connected; when each character or place is a different reflection or perspective on the theme, the story can be much more cohesive and meaningful. Themes can even tie together an anthology of different stories taking place in different worlds.
Love the MauLer shout out lol
The 1st season of Demon Slayer was very compelling because each episode was a successful chapter to a larger arc. In each chapter there was development of Tanjiro and Co or else or also there was Action. Throwing in the goofy emoji stuff was good additions to this for some emotional focus while there's the quality at the core of the story the tragedy and forgiveness aspects of the demons.
Mugan Train and Entertainment Districk deviated by being stand-alone set-piece areas but still progressed successfully with characters and actions. Personally feel the stories stretch out across one major focal point of a battle with a "big boss" is a less inspired form than the original sequence of chapters. However still very successful imo.
The Swordsmith Arc at least in the anime is a lot weaker: It's much more like a video-game level with big boss: The emotion and action don't feel more than progressing towards yet bigger bosses and the emoji use is overly used while the memory loop device ends up feeling like filler instead of informing the story's development. The worst aspect is the self-contained arenas don't feel like they're driving the world-building along atst which I feel is important: There should be the journey of the characters and the viewer also learning about the world at the same time which was successful in season 1 and felt at least to be included in the Entertainment District also.
For example a mystery build-up as per the above district probably would have worked better than Swordsmith Village snap to attack snap to big battles and flash-backs cue most of the episodes done... it's a lot weaker in driving both emotion and action and weaving those into the world progressing as well as the character's journey through the story.
That said, nit-picking I think the core idea in the story is excellent: I'd have structured more along first season by Swordsmith, a good number of years should pass and Tanjiro should be a young man by then, more grim, more experienced etc for example to align with his growth eg the sunbreathing visualization of this.
👍🏻
Yeah, I've been thinking similarly about plot holes for a while... I think what it comes down to is that, though anything is explainable, not everything is explainable *in a satisfying way*. By explaining a plot hole, you're inevitably adding something to the work, and that addition will have an effect on its quality. The idea of a plot hole is just gesturing toward the idea that there's some sort of scale of how well you can explain something without it feeling contrived/unsatisfying/etc. eg You can explain away any plot hole just by saying "It was all a dream", but in the process you've just ruined the story. The connection stuff helps explain why dream theories are unsatisfying, but I don't think its strictly necessary to understand the problem of plot holes.
20:00 this is how I felt with the upside down in Stranger Things, my assumption was either that
A. it was an ancient place that had always existed (but that doesn't work because places like castle byers is there)
B. It was created at some point, or procedurally generated from some point
or
C. It's bullshit magic that updates random things from reality on the fly (not good)
I'm really glad it was made clear because otherwise I'd have felt like Twin Star Exorcists where it's just "lol idunno", atleast until i dropped it (like 3 episodes left and it wasn't ever really good)
love any sort of story videos like this as an aspiring writer
I think the inverse of there being no logical connection plot hole can also be true. Where a later chapter breaks a previously established logical connection, in fact that's probably a more solid plot hole as it's much harder to explain a logical connection being broken than it is to insert information that fills in a missing logical connection. In fact breaking the logical connection would then need to be refilled with new invariably weaker information.
1:32 Of course you're not entertained, it's not the entertainment district, it's *The Red Light District* .
12:42 That's not Tanjiro's father, he's his ancestor. The memory is from hundreds of years ago.
love that you are smart and pick to make the video about demon slayer 10 out of 10 i hope you can keep making videos for a long time
I feel like I already knew this on an intuitive level, but it's interesting to hear it put to words.
What you said about plot holes reminds me of Zaraki Kenpachi from Bleach. Dude's power level made no goddamned sense for most of the series, because he's the biggest badass of the most badass good guy characters, _barely_ loses a fight to main character Ichigo who at that point is nowhere near his full potential, and later barely _wins_ a fight against a villain who is ostensibly stronger than a guy that Ichigo (who is now _way_ stronger) was more or less equal to. Almost like the author kept changing his mind about how strong this guy was supposed to be just to suit what he was writing at the moment.
Except even later it's revealed that there _was_ an valid explanation for this all along - Zaraki subconsciously holds back just enough to make every battle challenging since he's afraid of being too strong to find worthy opponents. This was even made a plot point.
Tite Kubo isn't a great writer _exactly,_ but he's weirdly good at that sort of thing. I seriously could not tell if that was something he planned out ahead of time or if he just made up an excuse to explain the inconsistency and then made the most of it. Honestly, both answers would be kinda impressive in their own ways.
I remember something similar happening to Superman in the Justice League cartoon.
Yeah, this video really cements for me that I'd love you and the EFAP crew to talk about stories and what makes writing good. If nothing else to talk through plot holes would be really fascinating.
As I was watching this video I thought "This guy would make a great guest for EFAP" and then he mentioned MauLer and Co. Glad to see someone in the comments agreed
wow your idea of them losing the swordsmith village is actually so interesting that i forgot that you were talking about demon slayer. that would've been amazing, i mostly watch demon slayer for the eye candy but having a plot actually sounded pretty cool.
I've definitely noticed this in many of the fictional stories that I consider to be some of the best examples of pure storytelling. As he mentions in the video, I've also noticed how everything is always connecting together or alluding to future events in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, this series truly does this masterfully.
Another example I really like is Umineko no Naku Koro Ni (Umineko: When They Cry), the manga or Visual novel, not the anime. It starts off a bit slow, like a typical murder mystery story, but the more I read into the Umineko manga the more my mind was continuously blown. The way in which the creator of the story (Ryukishi07) continuously connects everything together to slowly craft a grand narrative was masterful. I could never predict what the truth behind each mystery would be, the story constantly makes you doubt yourself and subverts your expectations, but when the truth is revealed it always makes perfect sense. It's truly wild. You do have to really pay attention to follow the story of Umineko though, the entire story is structured as a series of logic puzzles.
12:40 it wasnt his father, but an ancestor of his.
It explains the origin of the "dance of the fire god" that his family tradition carried on, was the "breath of the sun" technique that the guy left his ancestor to try and learn at least centuries ago.
Theres a reason for Muzan not sending a whole ass army of the kizuki on missions. He’s scared. He’ll always send the weaker ones so that the strongest ones are still with him even if he’s the strongest demon. Thats how badly Yorichii kicked his ass
Honestly the heroes should have lost that Swordsmith arc just as is. This story gives so much hype to it's Upper Moons just for them to get bodied with near no permanent losses. Even the whole mark thing that they pulled was such bull. I hate it so much and the fact that so many Hashira conveniently were able to use it at the exact point where they needed it baffles me. It's hands down one of my least favourite power ups in anime.
I really like your argument for plot holes not existing, but i also really enjoy the discussion surrounding plot holes. Its a cool way to see each person interpretation of the parts that dont fully make sense
One thing to keep in mind is that its important to have enough connections to give the feeling that everything is connected, but not enough to give the feeling that everything is the same
"Charles Xavier has zero effect on the plot" - he says to Strange what he said to Logan which encourages Strange, as it does Logan, to try and find a new approach to the problem which results in him encouraging America to find a new approach as well. he literally did in this story what he always does: teach the lead a lesson. in this case the lesson is "Just because someone stumbles and loses their path, doesn't mean they're lost forever". it creates a connection to where we remember him from, it creates a connection to the information Strange has just got about the second version of himself that went bad, it connects to the relationship between Strange and Mordo who believes Strange and other magic users will bring ruin to the world (in the 616), it connects to why he believes he fails when he does - he isn't all good. Charles and Mordo were the only members of the Illuminati that served a purpose in the plot
Conceptualizing it as weak logic vs strong logic is actually very helpful.
9:20
Muzan already did an overkill with 2 uppermoons to swordsmith village.
In his eyes they r hashira killers and one is enough to do this job but just to be sure he sent another one considering they lost 1 already.
They never thought of any hashira to be stationed there + 1 or 2 hashiras can't defeat an uppermoon
The whole plan fell apart due to the Mark.
I think that the problem is that it’s a monster of the week series, but the monster of the week is monster of the arc. I really enjoy monster of the week shows, but they have an inherently short shelf life if there’s no changes in status quo or don’t have much continuity so anyone jumping in without prior knowledge, which Demon Slayer doesn’t really have.
I've been watching Mauler's critiques ever since he released his ~5 hour Last Jedi saga. It's nice to see that you enjoy his work too. Also, really interesting viewpoint on plotholes; I've never seen that particular perspective before, and it gave me some food for thought.
In the same vein: are you familiar with the podcast Every Frame A Pause (EFAP) that Mauler co-hosts? They have tons of guests on, whether it's to laugh along at bad takes or to debate with. Maybe you'd like to have a go at it and get some more exposure to their perspective on plot?
Please forgive the advice, if it is so unsolicited as to be rude. I just got a bit excited at our shared viewership.
The story is so simple in this anime,executes it beautifully,and isn’t very long,a great anime for sure
The reality of plot holes is that the writer of the story didn't plan ahead, didn't have rules, or broke the rules they did have. Making plot holes or retcons. So they do in fact exist, but I see what you're saying, it's just simply not true though. It's only true if the writer doesn't do the things I listed above, meaning that they're just throwing the story/plot together as they go.
There's also things that the writer doesn't expect the reader to care about or know about. Like the animals and the thing you showed here 21:25. It either means the writer was lazy and didn't think about it or the writer is planning something crazy by the end, or didn't plan on it but does it later on anyway. Which means he can be both lazy and constructive of his own work. Like happy little accidents.
Plot holes are not bad, they're a thing that happen, because the human brain isn't perfect. We cannot possibly think of every little facet of a story we're writing to make a perfectly cohesive story with no plot holes ever. Especially if you actually want to publish in the least amount of time as possible.
Are you doing okay? Been worried about you and miss your posts. Praying
To tie together the issue with plot holes and shallow cameos. Whenever Disney tries to bring someone in if I'm invested enough to care about the character/references I generally know what that cameo can do so I try connecting dots together to see what this cameo can add, then when it is immediately dropped or whatever I feel punished for getting invested in the cameo. Tldr shallow cameos that add plot holes punish peoples investment in the story
I honestly think of plot holes as pockets to put the fanfic in lmao
Sorry that this is unrelated (the video is good though), I just wondered if you dropped Airlock Bound or are just slowly working on it. I remember really liking the improvements from the comic to the novel and I was looking forward to where you will take it. (I guess that I am more invested in seeing the creative process rather than the story itself haha. But Gale was cute too!! and I still remember the dandelion scene)
12:42 that isnt his father, though!!! the sword inside of the doll is super old (300+ years old) , so it couldn't be either his father or grandfather that the real yoriichi (the samurai) was talking to.
>If I wanted to be totally incompetent as a writer you might be like "okay i wanna level up my main character cause i need him to be able to fight the bigger guys so let's just put him through a generic boot camp" no that's bad, do what demon slayer did
lol. Lmao. Don't look up what the name of the next arc is.
The sheepish admission at the end sent me. Amazing video, as usual! 😂😂🤣🤣
Hey, I just found your channel. There are some interesting stuff going on here and I'd love to hear more. With so much talk about connection in the video my immediate thought as you were explaining was One Piece. I did a quick scroll through your channel and didn't see anything on One Piece. So, I guess what I'm saying is you should give One Piece (especially the manga) a go. The series is an absolute master at reusing concepts and forging connection within its world via foreshadowings. I'm sure you'll get a kick out of the world building.
Edit: nevermind, that was written while watching the video. I saw the One Piece footage.
i was just waiting for the plot twist that someone bought a demon vase and brought it home but alas. dude can place the pots as he pleases
The FTL kamikaze ram is irredeemable because now the best weapon isn't hyper Lazer batteries it's FTL missiles
you are prying my eyes open with a crowbar. it's too late at night for this
I think there's something to be said about filler with this perspective. If plot derives engagement from significant connections, filler is all about the absence of significant connections. A really simple example would be main good guy v main bad guy. If the good guy went on a side quest that ended with some progress to defeating the bad guy, it wouldn't be filler. But if the good guy went on a side quest that had no connection to the main bad guy, it would be called filler. The 'main guys' themselves are expectations derived from setup and the connections of those roles to the world. The 'end of the world' bad guys or events are literally connected with the concept of life itself, which expands through every facet of an inhabited world full of people. The whole engagement of 'end of the world' concepts is how much life itself matters to the people who have it within the story.
To expand on 'good guy v bad guy' just a little more as a final note, if the feud between the two 'main guys' actually has no consequence to a more interesting world, then it feels empty. But I used the subjective term 'more interesting' to describe engagement. So there might be a lot to say about this. What happens if a writer creates a world with some main guys, but unintentionally writes a world more interesting than the intended story? Does one distract from the other? When would such a situation really be a problem? I have no further comment on this... err... comment. The rest would be filler.
What tends to happen is a manga gets popular and only after that does the mangaka get sent to writing bootcamp. A good storyteller knows how things end before their first public output. This is why AoT can make references a hundred chapters apart--the world was built before the story and thus was able to interact with the story. Meanwhile, Demon Slayer is in the ranks of shounen anime that just started as a cool guy with a sword killing baddies and had to justify its own existence later. Bleach started the same way. MHA is a slight variation on the formula. There is rarely a long-term plot starting off and when world-building begins somewhere in the middle, it's impossible to do much as any real world-building makes earlier parts of the story seem very strange as there's no interaction between the world and the story. This results in samey arcs with FotM villains and new power-ups for Protag-kun on the regular.
Some anime mature out of it, in a way. Bleach, for instance, has a very cool 'magic' system and some of the later arcs feel more connected though definitely still tacked on to the initial underdeveloped world. Other times, like with MHA, the author just doesn't have the chops. They can still make something people enjoy but it probably won't be generally great.
To add to the point about MHA, it was also created with the end already planned out.
Your take about mha is garbage mate. Plus, bleach has a shit magic system
I listened to this video and the first thing I thought was "Ohhhhh, so that's why One Piece is so good"!
They didn’t have much wiggle room anyway…what I mean is it’s entirely based on the manga in every single way
Jokes in this script are all bangers. Excellent writing skills. Also great video.
The real Equator was the friends we made along the way.
I miss your content. I hope you are doing well. Happy new year
Da king is back baby he neva miss
I'm not watching this video, because I want to wait till the whole season is finished airing, so I can watch it all at once and not forget any salient points (which I always do when I watch weekly), and I don't want to see a single frame of the show until then. But know this, Uniquenameosaurus... I am sorely tempted to abandon discipline and watch all available episodes right away, just so I can watch this video you made about it. That is how much I enjoy consuming your content, and your takes on the stuff you cover. Know this also. I shall return.
Honestly the biggest missed opportunity in this arc is that easily half of the runtime or more could've been an entire training arc with the dummy
Like, you have a thing set up as being the only surviving record of this ancient fighting style(which has been a background plot focus for a while but the leads have gone cold!!), in the form of a thing that fights you, and performs actions so complex and impossible that it needs to have six arms working in tandem to replicate it
That's a fucking INSANE plot element, a golden egg that could string audiences along for as long as you feel like it
So what's done with it? Tanjiro fights it for a couple days(with it at a handicap) over the course of half an episode until he can manage to get a single hit in, and destroys it completely, having learned nothing about how it fights whatsoever, and uncovering the sword which is only tangentially related and not as interesting as an avenue for growth
Huh, yeah that could have been an interesting direction too.
Personally I disagree, I feel like the show shouldn't focus too much on the training arcs because they can get repetitive. This training arc and the last one only strengthened Tanjiro's body instead of teaching him new techniques like the water breathing forms. Also, I just want to see more fighting ofc, my monkey brain demands it.
@@ba-bakana4490 That's the thing though, it would literally be nothing but fighting, that's why the dummy is a fantastic idea
@@Lazypackmule Yeah, guess it's just personal preference. If Tanjiro were to learn how the dummy fights, then the author would have to put in effort to explain the intricacies of its attacks. Honestly, I doubt they would go that far since they tend to show the fighting styles through visuals alone. They might've focused on this aspect in the manga but the anime would've probably cut it down for pacing. (Not a manga reader)
@@ba-bakana4490 yeah there's actually a pretty good explanation about how the doll helps train, but the anime cut it out... which i don't know why. i guess it doesn't push the story forward much but at least there's an explanation lol. they also rearranged some scenes which i feel really made some episodes get weird pacing.
forgive me if i forgot some details, but the doll isn't as simple as a wind-up doll, there's a puzzle to unlock its mechanics which kotetsu didn't tell muichiro when he took the key from him. after unlocking it, by rotating the finger/knuckle joints of the doll's hands, one can configure it to target and train with the one practicing. tanjiro's training was much more effective than muichiro's since it aimed at filling the gaps of his weaknesses, while this was not known to muichiro. or the anime-only audience lol.
i still don't really understand why they didn't include this since it's not like it would have taken too much screen time and some scenes were drawn out anyway. if you want to read about this it's chapters 103-104 in the manga.
Another great one!
Monster must be an amazing example of this, yes?
Great video, subpar thumbnail. Almost didn't click it, but I'm glad I trust in your content being good.
This video deserves more views, it's a shame I didn't even know you put out a video until now.
I figured it out, difference between plot hole and something that hasnt been explained yet, is very dependent on how the charactes react. Like the way characters reacted in Holdo maneuver, was like something that had a very strong possiblity of working. To the point that Hux guessed what she was doing simply by her turning her ship around. So it couldn't be the first time someone tried it. Which if both are true, then everyone''s and idiot for not doing it more in the movie. where other ships just sit around accepting death
Ive watched a few of your videos and i think your commentary is really good. I think you'd enjoy picking through RWBY. But even if you don't, as long as you keep making videos ill be here. Good work.
27:26 nah you good man, I like the video a lot!
there is no such word as "adaption". It is adaptation.
4:42 but... its not a twist tho :0 everyone knew about swordsmiths its like "oh theres a village of em thats cool" unless I'm missing something incredibly obvious
I do think that having things be *_too_* connected makes some things feel quite contrived and unrealistic.
Have you watched Golden Kamuy? I think you would enjoy it and find it really interesting, and related to this video, so many of the characters have links to each other, some they don't even realize
lol. The thumbnail is about seasons, our rotation of earth and our grade 7 lesson today. That's pretty weird coincidence
Happy new year miss your content great UA-cam channel
All I gotta say is that even is the story is plain and it has some plot holes, you gotta agree that the animation and delivery is top tier