[1517] Nothing Bad

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Re: [1517] Nothing Bad

Post by Invisigoth » Mon Mar 19, 2018 3:22 pm

Yaku knows most of her moms lovers, she's probably made coffee for them and talked them into buying donuts before they leave in the morning. I'm pretty sure she has a lot of experience in handling the men that mom attracts

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Re: [1517] Nothing Bad

Post by NinjaDefenestrator » Mon Mar 19, 2018 4:14 pm

Roborat wrote:
Mon Mar 19, 2018 2:25 pm
This is getting kind of meta. So is Fred admitting defeat and is getting one of his characters to write Miho's story now? And her sending Junpei back to be with mom. I think she knows there is a developing relationship between the two, and she is trying to help it along.
Yakugashi is using Junpei’s feelings for Komugiko to her advantage. She’d probably be pleased if he disappeared once he was no longer useful, since then he’d leave her mom alone. Hopefully Junpei can get Mugi to like him enough that Yaku lets him stick around.

So far that also appears to be the case with Miho; as long as Miho’s story is fixed enough to stop making Mugi sad, who knows if Yakugashi would care what happens to “the Tohya woman” herself? The kid is already better at manipulating people than her great-grandma (or anyone) gives her credit for.

Extrapolating from what Fred has mentioned in Twitch chat, Yakugashi seems like she possesses more than a bit of her grandmother’s icy, calculating personality. She might be a little insecure, but nothing fazes her except her mother’s well-being. As hot-headed, loud, and flawed as Komugiko is, she’s obviously doing something right as a parent. Yaku loves her mom and wants to protect her at all costs, which seems to be driving her current behavior.

On the other hand, Nadeshiko (Yaku’s grandmother) was raised in a drastically different environment by a mother who appears to have been emotionally abusive at best, if Fred’s “visit to the family shrine” comics were any indication.

Maybe that means Yaku won’t grow up to be quite as cold as her grandmother after all, since they were shaped by such different upbringings. Nature versus nurture and all that.

Still, god help Megatokyo if Mugi suffers anything worse than a concussion and a shattered leg.

Fred, if you see this, you’ve done a wonderful job of building a tertiary character to such a degree that I’m fascinated by her even though I don’t like her much. I get the impression that the eventual “Sawatari Family Values” spin-off is further developed than we fans realize.

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Re: [1517] Nothing Bad

Post by Teddy-Werebear » Mon Mar 19, 2018 5:04 pm

cidjen wrote:
Mon Mar 19, 2018 9:21 am
OMG YOU ARE JUST LIKE THE REST OF US TWB...
Heavens to purgatory, I hope not.

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Re: [1517] Nothing Bad

Post by Xavon » Mon Mar 19, 2018 7:28 pm

I can think of three kinds of interesting stories wherein nothing bad happens to Miho.

The first is where only good things happen. Long, hard, good things, over and over until she cries out in pure joy. But somehow I doubt Yaku (Fred) or even Miho would want that.

The second is to focus on the word 'to'. Nothing bad happens 'to' her, but lots of bad things happen around her. It is a style of comedy, she walks blithely through life, unaware of bad things and near misses that plague her (Like the Mr Magoo). Or, she is aware, but is too arrogant/self important to care (like Sakamoto or Glanderstone Gander).

The third way is to also have bad things happen around her, but instead she helps out. Make her a hero that is never directly effected by tragedy, crime, etc. but still goes out of her way to help others.

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Re: [1517] Nothing Bad

Post by Invisigoth » Mon Mar 19, 2018 7:29 pm

Should there be a "Sawatari Family Values" strip you'd first have to click a button affirming that you are age 18 or more and then you'd need to buy a subscription.

The Sawatari's are an excellent example of http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... geMorality

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Re: [1517] Nothing Bad

Post by Peter » Tue Mar 20, 2018 3:32 am

Will it occur to Miho to ask, "Why can't I write my own story?"

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Re: [1517] Nothing Bad

Post by HakuRyoku » Tue Mar 20, 2018 11:57 am

I think you'd have to convince her that something like that would be possible first. girls had to deal with this for the past few hundred years presumably, after awhile you tend to think that there is no way out.
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Re: [1517] Nothing Bad

Post by jkhartl » Tue Mar 20, 2018 12:00 pm

Peter wrote:
Tue Mar 20, 2018 3:32 am
Will it occur to Miho to ask, "Why can't I write my own story?"
Because when Miho has tried to change her story it goes bad. She is the "analogue" not the "writer" or the "artist".
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Re: [1517] Nothing Bad

Post by Ubu » Tue Mar 20, 2018 1:49 pm

Forgive me if I've missed a discussion of this already, but... on third reading (!) this started bothering me. Which way do Yakugashi's ears face? Fred may be going off-model a bit. In the latest strip:

[*]Panels 1-2: appear to face forward, somewhat droopy.
[*]Panels 3-6: Definitely face backwards, sharply.
[*]Panel 7: Forward again, very droopy.
[*]Panel 8: Backwards, very sharp, almost laid flat.
[*]Panel 9: Forwards, and the left one is halfway down the head -- although there's a hair line that might be part of the ear, indicating she's merely twitched it 'downwards'

Her ears are very mobile and indicative of her moods, but I've never seen any animal that can rotate their ears 180 degrees...

Edit: they reverse in the prior strip too. In panels 1-4 they face backwards, in 5-6, forward, then backwards again in 7-8.

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Re: [1517] Nothing Bad

Post by Mamma Peach » Tue Mar 20, 2018 1:53 pm

So we have the writer (Yaku), the artist/otaku (Piro), and the actress (Kimiko)... except they aren't exactly collaborating on this project. The story could end up a mess if there's no collaboration.

By the way, animal ears face in a lot of different directions depending on their mood, and quite quickly too (as well as even independently like one going one way and one going the other way).

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Re: [1517] Nothing Bad

Post by maldrul » Tue Mar 20, 2018 4:24 pm

Ubu wrote:
Tue Mar 20, 2018 1:49 pm
Forgive me if I've missed a discussion of this already, but... on third reading (!) this started bothering me. Which way do Yakugashi's ears face? Fred may be going off-model a bit. In the latest strip:

[*]Panels 1-2: appear to face forward, somewhat droopy.
[*]Panels 3-6: Definitely face backwards, sharply.
[*]Panel 7: Forward again, very droopy.
[*]Panel 8: Backwards, very sharp, almost laid flat.
[*]Panel 9: Forwards, and the left one is halfway down the head -- although there's a hair line that might be part of the ear, indicating she's merely twitched it 'downwards'

Her ears are very mobile and indicative of her moods, but I've never seen any animal that can rotate their ears 180 degrees...

Edit: they reverse in the prior strip too. In panels 1-4 they face backwards, in 5-6, forward, then backwards again in 7-8.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AtP7au_Q9w

Fox ears can move like that. When the ears are facing backwards, that's referred to as 'pinned'. Fred just didn't draw them laying as flat as a real fox's ears would.
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Re: [1517] Nothing Bad

Post by Peter » Tue Mar 20, 2018 6:39 pm

Peter wrote:
Tue Mar 20, 2018 3:32 am
Will it occur to Miho to ask, "Why can't I write my own story?"
jkhartl wrote:
Tue Mar 20, 2018 12:00 pm
Because when Miho has tried to change her story it goes bad. She is the "analogue" not the "writer" or the "artist".
If this is a new story, what story is there for Miho to change?

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Re: [1517] Nothing Bad

Post by iffy » Wed Mar 21, 2018 5:14 pm

One ever-present question is how much control or not does Miho have over this alleged power to form meaningful stories. Stories which by themselves are somewhat compelling and that get more powerful with some number of skilled creators personally shaping them with even more force and emotion. Apparently. Is there any decision ("writing") going on from Miho in the initial conditions, later plot, both. Or is the whole a formed entity created by the processes of the story (and or Miho herself) influencing and or interacting with creators, all stemming from some point of power that is neutral and ill-formed to begin with, that nobody controls. Or is all that from within Miho and only powered by her experiences of the past, with no later works reflecting back and impacting the source in any way. Etc. A lot there to guess at.

In the sense of Analogue many of us have some idea about what it might be, that's not a traceable specific work. Rather it would be a literary sense of either 1 "a work which resembles another in terms of one or more motifs, characters, scenes, phrases or events" 2 "an individual motif, character, scene, event or phrase which resembles one found in another work" That's like the TVT Ur-Example, but not as much in the sense of Japonisme is Animesque as a predating itself sort of imitation of artists such as Fleicher. It's more like in how does one find the source of such stories as the creation or flood myths when there's no way to locate the sources themselves, but rather only get a notion of how such things can spring up simultaneously in cultures that have no way to interact or even know of each other. Stories that get written after generations that might be little like the originals. Discounting such fanciful notions as superior beings from other planets having created all Earth societies, or even human DNA; which are also somewhat perhaps ironic, as ideas that can't be traced back to anything particularly specific either. How does one learn of the original versions of sung methods of passing down history when there is no writing. The guessing at drawings of things that appear highly stylized is how correct. Or does it only matter how a viewer feels it is, in order to pass along to others. Maybe that's more akin to blue-orange morals, but without names for the colors, which ren't in wavelengths biological eyes can process.

If this is a new story? Seems less a new one, more like no story at all. An open story. Yet one with an existing generic sense of how things should go; people love her, then she dies, or everyone around her dies, or something like that perhaps, and then the "observing participants" experience catharsis as the character(s) experience tragedy. Whatever the tragic event(s). Maybe in spite of them.

It appears Yaku then wants to not so much change a story but the template for the one her mother is part of. Yet in another way, Miho's story isn't over, but rather ostensibly Kimiko substituted for the required death in the eyes of some audience. We could even ask, how does the specific Miho-story end if she is still around? So we might just say then Yaku wants to start another story that isn't the last one but a story that works in a different way than how the old ones were said to work.

On another level, there is a Miho story going on right now. Having been substituted for, she's been placed in "hiding" by a ninja that didn't carry out emergency termination order, where another ninja family member sort of gets another story going by questioning Miho. Before perhaps carrying out the order though, it's all interrupted by a teenage fox girl who wants to create another story for Miho. Another story aside from what's supposed to happen but apparently didn't, and aside from where Yaku's mother is sad. Which Mugi didn't appear all that sad exactly, and indeed, is currently experiencing no emotions.

Assuming Yaku gets somewhere with the idea at all. Does whatever Yaku may create as author lead to a retelling of the Kotone story where all her friends aren't executed and she isn't locked away in disgrace, but is an entirely different story altogether. Will it if created involve Kimiko acting it out with insight and feeling and Piro drawing it with that special emotional quality. Is this Yaku only or mostly, with Sight being something that is different or that doesn't happen.

Peter wrote:
Tue Mar 20, 2018 3:32 am
Will it occur to Miho to ask, "Why can't I write my own story?"
Isn't that what she's been doing?
Mamma Peach wrote:
Tue Mar 20, 2018 1:53 pm
The story could end up a mess if there's no collaboration.
If one considers it not a mess already ;)

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Re: [1517] Nothing Bad

Post by Rapierman » Wed Mar 21, 2018 11:44 pm

NinjaDefenestrator wrote:
Sun Mar 18, 2018 10:26 pm
Teddy-Werebear wrote:
Sun Mar 18, 2018 9:25 pm
cidjen wrote:
Sun Mar 18, 2018 5:13 pm
But do you want to make Mugi sad ? ...
Gotta break some eggs to make an omelet, bub.
Are you going to explode with rage if we ever see Miho happy? Please livestream it if so. I’ve never seen a bear spontaneously combust before.
We leave that to the person with the baka-hammer...

....or was it that certain fire-kitsune? I'm never sure.


EDIT: I'm amused that the fate of Miho is now in the hands of a precocious kid foxgirl and how well she writes.
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Re: [1517] Nothing Bad

Post by Peter » Thu Mar 22, 2018 12:08 am

Peter wrote:
Tue Mar 20, 2018 3:32 am
Will it occur to Miho to ask, "Why can't I write my own story?"
iffy wrote:
Wed Mar 21, 2018 5:14 pm
Isn't that what she's been doing?
Yes, but up to now she has been trying to steer her existing story.

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Re: [1517] Nothing Bad

Post by cidjen » Thu Mar 22, 2018 5:18 am

iffy wrote:
Wed Mar 21, 2018 5:14 pm
If this is a new story? Seems less a new one, more like no story at all. An open story. Yet one with an existing generic sense of how things should go; people love her, then she dies, or everyone around her dies, or something like that perhaps, and then the "observing participants" experience catharsis as the character(s) experience tragedy. Whatever the tragic event(s).
That is probably THE at-least 10-year old question everybody here tries to imagine an answer to ;)
iffy wrote:
Wed Mar 21, 2018 5:14 pm
It appears Yaku then wants to not so much change a story but the template for the one her mother is part of. Yet in another way, Miho's story isn't over, but rather ostensibly Kimiko substituted for the required death in the eyes of some audience. We could even ask, how does the specific Miho-story end if she is still around? So we might just say then Yaku wants to start another story that isn't the last one but a story that works in a different way than how the old ones were said to work.
I know I have been orbiting in the plane of, well if the Story needs something Real to appear credible, either a Real Person = Analogue, or a good Storyteller = Actor/Actress, either of them are to wake the Emotions in the Audience, so that the Emotions give the Story Life... and in turn the Emotions backfire on the Anchor, and affect their Real Life - in case of an Analogue, the Emotions give them another Life; in case of a Storyteller, they create Popularity for themselves;

To expand on that, Audiences probably see no problem with a Storyteller jumping between Stories; it is after all, Storytellers job to make the Audience create Emotions / convey the Character's emotions to the Audience, and they can do that by telling the Audience many stories; but the Analogue appears to be required to be Anchored to just one story.

So I actually wrote earlier what am I imagining would happen if the Story has not been Retold yet (the game is not yet released) but the Analogue jumps ship - the free-floating Story without an Anchor could: either crash on some rocks, or be rescued, by being given / finding a new Anchor... by some Powers That Be or by Fate...

Now however (after reading some reference / inspirational material / re-reading certain MT chapters, ehm) I am not so sure this could actually be the outcome.

In the 'reference material' - it's probably the Eastern Cultural Thing - that the 'good people' 'protagonists' have to be introverts and hide their real feelings, and those who don't, are at least labeled 'weird'. Or maybe because in what I have been reading (eg. Clannad) the MC is really introvert on his feelings. It is expected of him to be.

Kimiko is after all hiding her real emotions really hard from the Audience. Something that she can do, that Miho never actually could. Because as an Analogue, Miho is Required to live the Story, even if she hates it, it is her Story. A Story she doesn't want. Wonder if a lot of what happened to her, did happen because the Audience caught a whiff, that she hates the Story...

Also Piro hides his 'real feelings' deep. It is a lot unlike our 'western' culture stereotypes actually. Something that Miho teases him about, calling it less-than-honest... she can see that, as she's of Western origin too (if the thesis about her being Irish is plausible), but the one time he uncovered them, to her, she got scared of involvement (or rather, of him getting hurt by the Horde), and burned them. Hence he hides them, and only reveals them in his drawings. Not only Yuki can detect that, also the NPC did.

So Kimiko and Piro may actually be better off with the old Story than Miho the Analogue... it may not be as dangerous to them, or anything/anyone they create, as it is to Miho. They have layers and layers of inner protection on their Real Feelings, something Miho never had.
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Re: [1517] Nothing Bad

Post by iffy » Thu Mar 22, 2018 12:30 pm

Rapierman wrote:
Wed Mar 21, 2018 11:44 pm
EDIT: I'm amused that the fate of Miho is now in the hands of a precocious kid foxgirl and how well she writes.
It is amusing, but not so certain it's factual.

Peter wrote:
Thu Mar 22, 2018 12:08 am
Yes, but up to now she has been trying to steer her existing story.
Oh, but has she been? It isn't clear she is ever taking an active role, except perhaps where she decides to show up. Maybe that's the best indication she is writing or steering, but it seems pretty thin. More so though, it seems she's mostly just rolling along with what happens. Going along with it, regardless of how much of what happens is because of her direct actions, indirect/innate powers, or however it all functions. The way she puts it sometimes, it's almost like a thing hunting and tracking and pushing the story along a roughly pre-determined path of sorts. Anyway I was just kidding earlier, it isn't apparent she has been "writing" anything.

Yet if Miho is already controlling it mostly or all, or if she doesn't actually care, etc, we might not expect her to say anything like hey why can't I write this. Unless that's where the story is going, towards her appearing to try to write something she already is or doesn't need to because it takes care of itself. Perhaps though Yaku has it right, Miho can't write her own, needs another to do so. Or there's no way to do it without being obvious she is doing so, and how immersive would that be for the viewers. Like how it might be for the sequence of events that gets Yuki to suggest calling the CoE people for help.

It's those sticking points like that. Her appearing to let people think whatever they think is the truth. She appears to do that a lot such as with Masamichi at Megagamers circa 800, with after Ikebukuro 1120ish, and with Yuki in the 1250s. How she interacts with Ed and Dom, and things like knowing Largo needed a friend check and Kimiko was going to be in a difficult situation. Plus how she seems to tell most people the story has to end with her dying (or seeming to, if our only direct potential example is true). While allegedly the real story requires everyone close to her to die.
She's inconsistent, which is probably made worse in that most all the information is from her indirectly or directly to begin with.

cidjen wrote:
Thu Mar 22, 2018 5:18 am
That is probably THE at-least 10-year old question everybody here tries to imagine an answer to ;)
A simpler sort of explanation might be that MT is a highly perceptional place, where even people in the otaku mindset can fail to see the zombies. Where things are what they seem even when they're not what they seem, or there's not even any difference between those.
Kimiko is after all hiding her real emotions really hard from the Audience. Something that she can do, that Miho never actually could. Because as an Analogue, Miho is Required to live the Story, even if she hates it, it is her Story. A Story she doesn't want. Wonder if a lot of what happened to her, did happen because the Audience caught a whiff, that she hates the Story...
If everything you do is real, and if all the circumstances wrap around to change the not existing to be the truth to observers, what is there to hide? Then again, playing a role isn't as much hiding anything as it is creating some sort of new reality.

As I've mentioned before though, it appears to some extent so far that in works there's sometimes a 'source of inspiration' or 'ideas for characters or stories' that Miho is or channels. It's not the entirety of what gets created (if we go with 1271, representations go into other things that have more added). So it's not just the character/story "source" we also have to have an implementation, where the creators who use that power often or mostly unknowingly might put in more of themselves and their ideas, new ways to change the works produced to be more real even. In this case say with perhaps say a motivated inventive writer Yaku, an empathetic understanding patient actress Kimiko, an emotive feeling artist Piro. And perhaps some insider maybe even other sort of power if not Analogue herself producer Sayuri.

That sort of thing wouldn't appear it should actually affect 'the source' even if Yaku uses other ideas that might not stem from most any single proto-story or from the type of story Miho supposedly embodies somehow. Of course we don't know how malleable Analogues are normally, but there's that twist here yes? What is going on right now inside Megatokyo is not a work being created via idea and notion, vaguely, by the uninvolved. But rather here ostensibly the story is itself out and about making things happen to the 'tagonists in MT. Is even one itself apparently. If the other sorts of derivative works can't change the initial conditions, being there itself might be enough to impact and change the nature of where it all comes from in return.

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Re: [1517] Nothing Bad

Post by cidjen » Thu Mar 22, 2018 5:15 pm

iffy wrote:
Thu Mar 22, 2018 12:30 pm
If everything you do is real, and if all the circumstances wrap around to change the not existing to be the truth to observers, what is there to hide? Then again, playing a role isn't as much hiding anything as it is creating some sort of new reality.
Well yeah that's my point, sort of, and the difference between the Analogue and the Story Teller: in this universe of Megatokyo, while the Story Teller conveys the emotions from the Story to the Audience, the Analogue works the other way round : the Audience's emotions are conveyed onto the Analogue and require the Analogue to behave as the Story tells, woes and sticks and stones to those who don't want to.
iffy wrote:
Thu Mar 22, 2018 12:30 pm
She's inconsistent, which is probably made worse in that most all the information is from her indirectly or directly to begin with.
Uhuh, because she was seemingly dead-set on making Largo's and Piro's life in Tokyo unbearable enough so they were >< this close to getting themselves deported willingly, but then she changed? See below.
iffy wrote:
Thu Mar 22, 2018 12:30 pm
Plus how she seems to tell most people the story has to end with her dying (or seeming to, if our only direct potential example is true). While allegedly the real story requires everyone close to her to die.
That I'd attribute to the 'wonders' of story telling over the years - the story got so twisted, it is unrecognizable, no one can tell which elements are real; so the Audience clings to one element that is most probable and sure of in everybody's life - i.e. that it will end. And to emotions that conveys to them - that is, sadness. Everything else can be made up any way the current Story teller has imagined.
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