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Post By
HH
In Reply To
Anime Jason 
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Member Since: Sun Sep 12, 2004
Posts: 2,834
Subj: Re: We do.
Posted: Tue Jun 17, 2008 at 04:07:08 am EDT
Reply Subj: Re: We do.
Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2008 at 09:53:52 am EDT (Viewed 320 times)


> > I still think, however, that if she saw someone about to be torn in pieces in front of her very eyes she'd dive from cover and risk herself to try and save them, even if that meant exposing herself to extreme danger, I don't think she's cold enough to just watch from cover as innocents are murdered thinking "now is not the time for me to intervene, what a shame."
> Lara is capable of doing that, but only if she believed there was a good reason to do so. Like when the Carnifex wiped out Shee-Yar - if Lara knew about it, she might try to convince him not to. But she would also know she has no chance at physically stopping him, and it would be futile and stupid to throw the Lair Legion at him as well.
> In other words if people were going to be vaporized, she would try to stop it intelligently if she could, but she learned long ago that sometimes it's important to heed fate and not become a part of history at the expense of the future.

I'm being deliberately vague to avoid spoilers, but if she saw a regular junior cast member about to be eviscerated I'm confident she'd act to prevent it, however illogical that might be in the long-term run of things.

> > Here we come up against one of the challenges of a shared universe multi-character round robin storyline. Given that situation, the options boil down to:
> > 1. The hero does nothing - this damages the hero's "heroism standing" and may tarnish readers' views of the character.

> But maybe if she's given incentive to do nothing, it'll make more sense. Like during the Moderator series when Faite pulled people out of the middle of a battle and told them they couldn't die or the memory of what was before would die with them.

That only works if there's nothing urgent in front of the character. If the hero watches as a tank runs over a baby and allows it because of some "higher purpose" it's very hard to retain sympathy with that hero of their higher pruipose.

> > 2. The hero leaps in and somehow impossibly saves the day - but this robs the story of a fuller resolution, and may "steal" the resolution away from other heroes more involved in that particular bit of the narrative and more "deserving" of getting the win in this case (see Dr Strange arriving to solve all the problems in Avengers: Disassembled).

> Lara believes the most important superpower is sometimes the mind, and strategy. She looks up to very long-range planners like Shema, the Hooded Hood, etc. She would love a chance to use their styles, to figure out a way to plan failure into someone's deadly plans, causing as little harm as possible.
> If you notice she rarely gets into superhero street fights like Hatman and CSFB! often do. Lara goes for subtlety first before trying to overpower someone - the latter is usually a panic reaction to near failure, and as Lara has been spending more time in the PV, she's becoming less prone to that.

But here I'm talking about a situation where only direct immediate physical intervention can offset tragedy. Even the Hooded Hood's fallen for this one on occasion, and suffered for it thereafter.

> > 3. The hero leaps in and gets taken down so other heroes get the credit for solving the situation - this can sometimes punk the hero that tries and fails, showing them as ineffective and requiring another hero to pull their fat out of the fryer. It can be made to work, but it has to be done very carefully.

> What if she does this but plans it that way? In other words, she hits the bad guy hard, in order anger, annoy, and bait him, and then runs away and leads him somewhere he can be ambushed. That keeps the bad guy away from innocents at least, and is a strategy the Psychic Samurai would teach: If you don't have the advantage, bring the enemy into one.

That reaction verges more on (2) above than on (3) as described.

One good example of this might be Giant Size X-Men #1, where the original team are all taken down (off-panel) by Krakoa so that the new team get to shine as heroes. Another, that always annoyed me, was how in the 90s height of Wolverine's popularity he was regularly portrayed as the cool experienced once over Spider-Man's rookie. He came in ans solved Spidey's long-running Hobgoblin plotline for him, for example, when Spidey proved unable to cope.

> > That's why in this case I'll probably go for my usual fourth solution: find a reason why the hero isn't there to be presented with that dilemma in the first place.
> > Even this comes with baggage. If the hero's not there just because he or she is at home with their feet up, or because they're not smart enough to know where they should be, those can also damage the character. But if the hero's off on a mission of their own, taking forward a different part of the storyline, then there's every reason they're not able to intervene and the problem goes away.

> That's probably the best option - not just because I care about the character, but because I'm taking into account the PVB regular readers. I've tried using alternative or unlikely heroes in tie-ins and such, and it's never received well. They might perceive it as taking the spotlight away from the favorites, i.e. Hatman, CSFB!, etc, because Lara Night is not a "resident character". That's a factor to weigh into this also - that realistically, Lara is perceived in the PV as a support character.

I think it's more a narrative thing than turf wars. If you've watched any particular character strive to overcome difficulties then you want that character to finally be the one to succeed. Anything else feels like a cheat.

In an ongoing connected storytelling universe there are some characters whose regular struggles in particular niches overspill into pretty much any story. Up till UT#322 any supernatural baddie seeking to conquer the Parodyverse would have to find a way past Xander, for example, whether the story was about Xander or not. Things have been so established that it would have been unrealistic for Xander not to be involved somehow, albeit often behind the scenes pulling the strings.

> How can she be elsewhere? Well, if she's not on the alien ship chatting with them at the time (depends when I get around to finishing that tie-in/mini-story and how the timing of its release goes) we have the Psychic Samurai and a handful of cosmic beings who have insight that can be helpful:
> 1. Chiaki could insist Lara be elsewhere purposely to keep her busy and out of trouble, because she senses Lara will die if she's present for some event. That's exactly the kind of manipulative behavior Chiaki displays regularly, only explaining her motives later.
> 2. Lara could be on the ship chatting with the aliens. She could observe some kind of calamity from there, and being intelligent, try to urge them to help. They have a strict policy of non-interference, though, so she's out of luck. By the time she gets out of there it would be too late.
> 3. Lisa could anticipate a horribly calamity happening to Lara and send her somewhere else, like Chiaki would do.

I'm not sure Lisa's allowed to do that, even obliquely. She's not authorised to prevent endings.

And from a practical point of view, if Lisa does that once for Lara why shouldn't she do it every time for all her friends?

> 4. A wholly ironic one: The Chronicler could accept that Lara does indeed have a purpose, and try to make up for his treatment of her by giving her an important task to do. Lara would give it priority, trying to get it done to mend fences, so to speak, and be completely distracted from the more dangerous event.

He's more likely to suddenly lift her from the fight and expel her from the Parodyverse - except that in itself would change the story and violate his office's purpose.

> > > Or that new alien race I added may have something for her to do at the time. Or maybe Lisa. Or she could be given a singular task that will leave her as a casual observer, or possibly in the dark, about what's going on.

I'm thinking that Lara could take the spotlight in first contact, and maybe even investigate the Shee-Yar Imperium with the aliens. I'm sure there must be some cosmic nasty that could plan something horrible with ninety billion corpses.

> > That's why I was wondering about Lara meeting the aliens. If she's embroiled in first contact then she'd definitely in Option 4. And I admit thatm of all the elements in the Saving the Future story so far, the aliens are the ones I haven't thought of a way to integrate yet.
> It all depends if I can time it correctly. She's not likely to be on the alien ship for weeks or months. Hours maybe. \:\)

Depends if she consents to go back and speak for Earth to the consortium. As I recall, Lara's an experienced space traveller well able to cope with things like that.

> > That's going to be challenging for me to update on archived pages.
> I might see if I can make the Show script smart enough to distinguish old numbers instead.

That might be an issue for Comicboards as well.




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