2013-05-02: [CT] Totally Not Foreshadowing Something

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Re: 2013-05-02: [CT] Totally Not Foreshadowing Something

Post by Graybeard »

Imp-Chan wrote:I actually started hating Ian right around this point in the story the first time through as well.
Why, out of curiosity? It's not like his hatred for elves wasn't rational. The justifications for that were already apparent when this arc went up. Was there something else about him that got your dander up?
Imp-Chan wrote: I did not include his being older than Meji on the list of reasons why, though. I felt that Jon was definitely too old for her, but didn't get the impression that Ian was in terms of either maturity or apparent age. Jon's easily a dozen years younger than Ian, but really, who's counting?
Particularly because of that unevenness in half-elf aging. I certainly didn't hold this budding relationship (proto-relationship? pseudo-relationship? chibi relationship?) against either of them at the time.
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Re: 2013-05-02: [CT] Totally Not Foreshadowing Something

Post by Imp-Chan »

Well... I believe I may have said something at the time actually. *hunts* Okay, here we go...
Imp-Chan, on September 26, 2003, wrote:I'm starting to think that our friend Ian is either far too quick to be concerned about people other than himself, or a really good actor. First that sob story about his sister, then his "Please, they'll kill you..." thing... I'm also wondering if the Errant in the story is going to be Meji... or Ian? I mean, he's the one all pissed at the elves, and he doesn't have any reason to actively like the humans, either. We've already seen him behave in a deceitful way (far more than Meji, if you go and look), and he has far more motivation to try to take out the elves. He may want to use Meji for that, too. All Meji wants is to pass her class by becoming a demi-goddess, thus completing her final project... she has no specific personal grudge against anyone (that we've seen), and has usually just done the simplest, most direct thing, with little regard for damage to people or property. Also... she's gullible, and pretty quick to trust, all things considered. She's pretty sweet, actually... especially with that whole "I wanna meet my father" thing.
Reading through my old posts is an eye-opening experience. So THAT'S what I look like unmedicated.

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Re: 2013-05-02: [CT] Totally Not Foreshadowing Something

Post by Graybeard »

Yeah, it's sobering to go back and look at who you were (or at least your on-line persona was) ten years ago, or more, isn't it?

The interesting thing is, I think you got Ian completely wrong there. In fact, rather than being "too quick to be concerned about people other than himself" or a good actor, he was simply in do-gooder mode, as his later letter to Evelyn made clear. Furthermore, it wasn't just a matter of being "all pissed at the elves"; he had a good reason for his feelings. Something that we forget is that even a ditz like Riley was pretty clear about the danger posed to Santuarielites by elves. And reasonably so; wouldn't you agree that the typical rabbit, if sentient, would hate foxes?

You sure got the Errant part right, though... which I'm not sure I was doing at the same time.
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Re: 2013-05-02: [CT] Totally Not Foreshadowing Something

Post by erejnion »

Why? I too always felt in a similar way. See, Ian is defined by trying to be a "do-gooder" without actually getting what being a "do-gooder" is about. In other words, you can say that he is only acting as a do-gooder. If you allow me to go on a tangent a little, I generally simply don't care about a lot of things. But I force myself a reaction when the situation demands it - to maintain my social mask. As a parallel: Ian's social mask is that of a do-gooder, so he is quick to try to keep it up. A self-righteous bastard who feels fake, and one of my biggest problems with the start of Errant Story was the chance Meji and Ian will really develop a normal relationship (looking back, it was a moot worry, but then again only EN couldn't guarantee me Po would write his next work well too). Though, Ian actually kind of redeemed himself when he started acting childishly around the whole flying thing. Sheesh. That's why I think of him as one of the best villains ever.
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Re: 2013-05-02: [CT] Totally Not Foreshadowing Something

Post by Graybeard »

I just don't get it. What would you expect Ian to do differently if he was motivated practically entirely by a desire to do the right and good thing? Remember, this is a guy who wrote a deeply compassionate, thoughtful letter to his much-loved sister explaining what he was up to in terms that could leave no doubt about his intent; later (in history terms, earlier in the story) mentioned to Meji that he thought he could help his whole freaking people by doing it; and then spent the entire first third of the story, right up to (and beyond) the moment he was Anilisized, doing it. If that's not walking the walk, I don't know what is.
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Re: 2013-05-02: [CT] Totally Not Foreshadowing Something

Post by Forrest »

Put me down as a defender of Ian starting off as an actual good guy too.

And honestly a lot of the quality of the story is lost to me if Ian is reimagined as a villain all along. "A well-intentioned guy going to extremes for his cause and then completely losing his shit when all hope is lost and there's nothing left but an enemy to seek vengeance against" is a much more interesting plot than "an evil bastard looking for an ultimate superweapon and then using it for nefarious deeds as he had planned all".

Shades of grey are what make the story interesting. Meji starts off cynical and callous and looking much more like the one most likely to turn into the superpowered evil maniac, but despite her very obvious sociopathic tendancies she apparently turns out pretty practical and responsible when she gets all her power. Ian starts off as the idealistic kid trying to save the world from a great evil and turns into the superpowered maniac himself. Without those initial good intentions, he'd be just as shallow an antagonist as if Chris (your stereotypical do-gooder adventurer with a heart of gold out to save the world) were the protagonist.
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Re: 2013-05-02: [CT] Totally Not Foreshadowing Something

Post by Imp-Chan »

I should probably clarify that my view both at the time and now is that it was more likely that Ian thought he was a good guy than that he was outright lying... and I'll admit he mostly did act like a good guy from the intent to be a good guy. What I was trying to say back then, and am I hope better capable of expressing now, is that sometimes, people who are convinced that they're the nice guy aren't actually that person deep inside. In other words, they do good things from good intentions, but they're not a nice guy because it's just how they are, they're really motivated by what they get out of being the nice guy... for example, getting to feel like they're a good person, or see themselves as useful, or impart an artificial importance to their existence. They don't realize that they're playing a part, but that doesn't make them real. That's why it was so easy for Ian to get sucked into the violence and rage... he was never as good a person as he thought he was, and he didn't have the natural defenses against it that he would have had if he deep down really was the nice guy he pretended to be.

Ian didn't have to go seek this nebulous magic McGuffin. He could have stayed home, and actually taken care of his family and friends even though he was powerless to do more than be there for them. That takes a different kind of being a good person, though, and Ian didn't choose the quiet support role. Instead he set out on the slimmest of chances to be a Hero, even though to all appearances nobody back home actually wanted one and it meant ditching his responsibilities in the meantime. Were his intentions good? Yes, of course, but that doesn't mean that deep down he wasn't in it for the chance to be Important as much as he was in it to help people. He made that same choice over and over... every time he had a chance to stop and care for people, he chose not to. Once he got Anilisized, he could have stayed in his village healing people and easily defending it from any elves ever. He could have gone political, allied with the Northern Confederacy, and made some pretty massive geopolitical changes from within the new power structure. He had options to work with other people to accomplish his goals... but he chose to go solo, and the only solution he could imagine was massive violence. That's... just not someone who was ever really a good person.

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Re: 2013-05-02: [CT] Totally Not Foreshadowing Something

Post by BloodHenge »

Forrest wrote:Shades of grey are what make the story interesting. Meji starts off cynical and callous and looking much more like the one most likely to turn into the superpowered evil maniac, but despite her very obvious sociopathic tendancies she apparently turns out pretty practical and responsible when she gets all her power. Ian starts off as the idealistic kid trying to save the world from a great evil and turns into the superpowered maniac himself. Without those initial good intentions, he'd be just as shallow an antagonist as if Chris (your stereotypical do-gooder adventurer with a heart of gold out to save the world) were the protagonist.
You raise an interesting point. Ian sought power as a means to an end, and once he had the power, that end is all he pursued. Meji wanted power as an end unto itself, and once she had it, she took a step back and thought about everything it could be used for. So Ian became a supervillain, and Meji became a philanthropist.
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Re: 2013-05-02: [CT] Totally Not Foreshadowing Something

Post by Graybeard »

Imp-Chan wrote:Ian didn't have to go seek this nebulous magic McGuffin. He could have stayed home, and actually taken care of his family and friends even though he was powerless to do more than be there for them. That takes a different kind of being a good person, though, and Ian didn't choose the quiet support role. Instead he set out on the slimmest of chances to be a Hero, even though to all appearances nobody back home actually wanted one and it meant ditching his responsibilities in the meantime. Were his intentions good? Yes, of course, but that doesn't mean that deep down he wasn't in it for the chance to be Important as much as he was in it to help people. He made that same choice over and over... every time he had a chance to stop and care for people, he chose not to. Once he got Anilisized, he could have stayed in his village healing people and easily defending it from any elves ever. He could have gone political, allied with the Northern Confederacy, and made some pretty massive geopolitical changes from within the new power structure. He had options to work with other people to accomplish his goals... but he chose to go solo, and the only solution he could imagine was massive violence. That's... just not someone who was ever really a good person.
But Impy, helping people is exactly what Ian did. Even after the awful jolt to his psyche administered by the murder-suicide his mom committed, he still went on such a massive healing binge among the Errants of the town, for no other reason than that he could. He devoted himself so single-mindedly to caring for people that his friends were worried about him. It wasn't until his disastrous attempt to resurrect Evelyn that he went completely off the deep end and became an evildoer. Furthermore, suppose he had got back to Santuariel in time to keep his mother from killing Evelyn and herself, or suppose Evelyn had been severely burned (which he could surely fix) but not killed by the fire. All available evidence suggests to me that he would have simply healed Evelyn as he had set out to do, then got down to the business of improving the lives of his people -- with or without taking on the elves. That was the way he was, right up to the awful moment when he stood in front of the charred remains of the family home. (Of course, we wouldn't have had nearly as interesting a story... but that's the way fiction works.)
BloodHenge wrote:
Forrest wrote:Shades of grey are what make the story interesting. Meji starts off cynical and callous and looking much more like the one most likely to turn into the superpowered evil maniac, but despite her very obvious sociopathic tendancies she apparently turns out pretty practical and responsible when she gets all her power. Ian starts off as the idealistic kid trying to save the world from a great evil and turns into the superpowered maniac himself. Without those initial good intentions, he'd be just as shallow an antagonist as if Chris (your stereotypical do-gooder adventurer with a heart of gold out to save the world) were the protagonist.
You raise an interesting point. Ian sought power as a means to an end, and once he had the power, that end is all he pursued. Meji wanted power as an end unto itself, and once she had it, she took a step back and thought about everything it could be used for. So Ian became a supervillain, and Meji became a philanthropist.
I don't see it that way at all. Meji had an end in mind too, and it was (at least IMO) a considerably less laudable end than Ian's. She just happened to survive the acquisition of superpowers with her basic sanity (such as it was) intact, which Ian did not. Nor was it obvious when it all happened that her sanity was going to survive. This moment is telling: if she hadn't had this weird, supernatural intervention to get her straightened out, do you really think she'd have avoided the trap that consumed Ian? I don't.
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Re: 2013-05-02: [CT] Totally Not Foreshadowing Something

Post by Imp-Chan »

You're arguing action. I'm arguing character. Ian did heal people, but the way I see it he did it for HIS sake more than theirs. Otherwise, why would he violate Leah's right to consent? There's a difference between being a do-gooder and being a good person, and while Ian was temporarily the former, I don't see him as ever having been the latter. To me, that makes him a better character, even if I don't like him very much. It reads as more true to watch a fundamentally selfish person who thinks they're a good guy erode into their worst self than it does to think a genuinely selfless person would snap and become suddenly this homicidal narcissist just because now he's got more power.

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