Jarl-of-the-North

... guys? As a warning?

Don't watch Welcome to the Game or its sequel before bed. Or at night.

I'm freaking out at the slightest noises...

I need some water.

The Jarl’s Musings; On the Subject of Purity

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the second installment of the Jarl’s Musings, the Musings that could potentially leave your own Musings in utter ruin.

There’s something that’s been bothering me lately about the idea of purity. The way that people seem to treat it as one of the ultimate expressions of goodness and compassion. It’s even been used as a synonym for words such as righteousness or virtue. This is especially prominent when it is one of the major themes in a given story, and it is often given links to both benevolence and to innocence. Which is where the problem comes in for me. What is that problem, one may ask?

Simple. Innocence and benevolence are not the same thing. Not by a long shot.

Allow me to explain my position here. A benevolent being is one that will go out of their way to attempt to make the world around them a better place, even if it’s in the smallest of ways. They at the very least understand the basic concept of good or positivity even if they don’t necessarily grasp the concepts of evil or negativity, and their actions reflect the goodwill they carry. Although in some cases – usually ones where the lives of the characters in question are considerably more complex than the hedonistic lifestyles of the Felaryan predators - it isn’t always clear, as sometimes the greater good requires some necessary evils to be attained. I would expand further on this, but as I have another Musing planned for the natures of benevolence and malevolence specifically, I think I will save that particular subject for a later date.

On the other hand, however, we have the nature of innocence. I find that Felarya is an excellent setting with which to demonstrate the darker side of this trait; yes, the actions of children or childlike beings such as Karbo’s Crisis are rarely taken with any intent to cause legitimate harm, but that is hardly any consolation to those whose lives are destroyed at their hands. Crisis routinely eats caravans of people who pass through central Felarya without so much as a second thought the vast majority of the time, the only exception that I’m aware of being the day she met Lea (I’m not saying there aren’t any other exceptions, but I’m not about to go digging through the whole Writing section looking for specifics). Another good example of this is the animated short that inspired the Toy Story movie series, where a toddler plays rather roughly with his terrified toys. The toddler might not have any malicious intent or even know what malice actually is, but that doesn’t make things any better on the toys’ end. It doesn’t make the encounter any less horrifying or any less painful to watch or, as some may see it, any less evil.

So why exactly is purity linked to both of those concepts when they can clash so heavily? It could be the roots of the word, but I personally don’t see how there could be much of a connection there.

Rather, if you were to ask me personally, I’d actually say that purity is significantly closer in nature to innocence than benevolence or goodness. The reason behind that being the actual definition of purity; unsullied. Free of outside influence.

Think about it. When a child is born, one couldn’t possibly expect them to understand the nature of good or evil. It’s beyond them; their primary concerns are going to be eating and sleeping. Now, some may argue that as they age, they’ll begin to get a grasp of right and wrong on their own, but by and large, that’s learned behaviour, not innate nature. People learn from their environments; where a gentle, kind child would result from a stable, supportive family, a violent, insecure one would arise from a dysfunctional, broken household. I know that there are exceptions to this rule, and that some people are more inclined to certain types of behaviour than others, but that’s generally how things tend to go down.

So what does this say about good and evil in relation to purity and innocence?

It says that purity is neither good nor evil, but of utterly neutral ground as a result of lack of exposure. Felarya isn’t exactly a place where good or evil have much sway among the predators of the world. As I said before, most of them lead simple, hedonistic lifestyles free of such hefty concerns; with a few exceptions, at best, they concern themselves with right and wrong in a much looser sense, and at worst, they don’t even think about that, their thoughts only extending to how something feels. They’re pure, but purity isn’t necessarily a positive thing, as a pure being can do absolutely catastrophic damage without concerning themselves with the morality of it. A pure creature is the closest thing to a truly amoral being that I have been able to find (I will discuss the nature of amorality in another Musing).

Essentially, good and evil are little more than additives, elements of learned behaviour, each of which eradicate purity in its own way. Good, in its own way, affects those it touches just as easily as the way evil corrupts. We have a natural grasp of positive and negative, but we don’t really learn how to apply that to the world at large without the proper environment and people to show us that.

And in all honesty... I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing that good and evil are things we have to learn. After all, we don’t always understand our most base emotions; if good and evil were innate, would we really be able to truly understand the nature of either one? Besides... even if positivity and negativity are innate, who is going to know better? The one who was born good? Or the one who learned about it, who chose it, and overcame everything that barred their way through great effort?

... So that’s all I really have to say on the matter. What are your thoughts on the issue? I’m legitimately interested to hear what you have to say.

With that said and done... I think that will be all. See you in the next installment.

JotN

The Jarl's Musings; Overpowered, Mary Sues, and Plot Armour

Hello everyone, and welcome to my Journal, which I have now given a title; the Jarl's Musings.

Now, I don't want to stir up an issue that's already been dealt with, but there is something that I feel the need to get off my chest, brought around by FrenchSnack's recent story "Wem?". As I'm sure many of you are aware, part of the reason he wrote that particular story is because he despises characters written around the idea of plot armour (something I understand completely), and because he wanted to reinforce the feeling of unease and fear that Felarya gives off once you get past all the light and fluffiness in the lives of the predators, such as Crisis. No one is safe on Felarya. There is always someone or something higher than you on the food chain, regardless of who or what you are, with perhaps the exception of the Guardians (and I personally doubt that even they are beyond reproach).

However, before we can even begin to address which characters have plot armour and which ones do not, we have to understand what plot armour actually is; a character's miraculous ability to survive situations they should not reasonably be able to live through. This means that they flat out should not have been able to survive a given predicament with their current skill set. There are some settings that find a way to get away with this, such as Berserk (the main characters DO survive situations that would kill any normal human, but at the same time, they tend to suffer so much for it that it makes you question whether or not that surviving is just extending the torture. Glass Plot Armour, if you will; it'll keep you alive, but it's so brittle that it'll shatter and ensure you get hurt in the process), but at the same time, most of the stories that suffer from the plot armour trope don't pull it off very well at all and just gets on your nerves, usually via something ridiculous or just flat out stupid like a Deus ex Machina.

So, I understand FrenchSnack's position here. Making a story tense and suspenseful usually means getting rid of any sense of security or plot armour that a story might have, like one might see in Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire, where main characters die almost constantly in an uncaring world bereft of honour or humanity. Much like how Felarya is, though in comparison to Westeros, most of Felarya is less cutthroat and subterfuge and more blatant and literal power struggles, though it's usually fairly one-sided.

But I digress; that is not what I want to discuss here. What I want to discuss is the actual setting of Felarya, and the definitions of overpowered/plot armoured characters. When you're thinking about this, you have to keep in mind how dangerous the setting and adversity your character might wind up facing actually is; Felarya is a perfect example of this because of how flat out dangerous it really is. As I said before, nobody is safe from winding up on someone or something else's menu. So how does one go about making a character with any realistic chance of surviving on this world without delving into the plot armour trope?

The obvious and most immediate answer is to have your character a member of one of the many giant sized predator species. I have nothing against this conclusion, but unless your character goes out of their way to antagonize other giant characters that could pose a legitimate threat to them or goes somewhere like the Green Hell, there isn't going to be much suspense. I personally don't like using this much, but I won't deny that it's a valid solution. So, moving on.

For human sized or even smaller characters, however, Felarya is a massive, unforgiving world. For some reason or another, almost everything wants to kill you, like Australia or Russia, but bigger and more varied in its biomes and dangers. The only legitimate way that these characters can reasonably survive in Felarya outside of befriending a giant or living in a civilized portion of the world such as Negav or Nekomura is through being incredibly powerful (lordmep's Fel and Toulon), incredibly skilled and/or resourceful (TyrantFang55's Ian and Carver), or simply stupidly lucky (JiroKatsu's Jerid... I think. Sorry if I got that wrong). Some might say that this is breaking one of Felarya's themes - the sense of helplessness that comes with facing down giant predators - but that's the truth of the matter; in order to last on Felarya for any extended period of time, human sized or tiny sized characters have to at the very least be able to escape the clutches of their respective predators before it's too late. If they don't have this capability, they're not going to last long, and if they do last long, they're probably wearing the dreaded plot armour.

But that brings up another issue; what defines the limits you can stretch before you climb into the other dreaded trope? The overpowered trope?

Personally, I feel that "overpowered" is dependent primarily on the context of the story and author in question. In my eyes, it's perfectly fine to make a character who can KO a giant so long as they are presented with adversities that they might not be able to handle as well. Be this social interactions, natural obstacles or disasters, or even just bigger giants or other characters with abilities that can counter the abilities of the character in question; so long as it's a legitimate adversity of some kind. Hell, that would make for a really interesting story; someone who's right at home fending off giants in the wild, suddenly finds him or herself completely lost in the deadly dance that is Negav's delicate politics. Don't tell me that wouldn't be fun to read. If you are telling yourself this, stop lying.

The only situation that I find "overpowered" to be a legitimate issue is when it crosses the border into one of the most despised tropes in media. Everyone say it with me now; Mary. Fucking. Sues. Or as I like to call it, the "Golden Age Superman" trope, where the character is good at absolutely everything and nothing poses a legitimate threat to them. I don't think I have to elaborate on this much further than that; everyone, at some point in their lives, has come across one of these characters at least once before. In my personal opinion, the only time a Mary Sue ever adds to the story is when they're being used for comic relief and nothing else. Powerful characters are perfectly fine; ones that have literally no challenge no matter what they're faced with are not.

And with that, I think I'm going to bring this Jarl's Musings to a close. What do you guys think about this dilemma? I'm interested to see what you have to say.

Just one last question before I go; Why hasn't anyone tried to write a story about Felarya's subterranean world yet? I know we don't have much to go on, but that shouldn't be stopping anyone; there's a dragon's hoard worth of potential in the world beneath the surface, and as far as I know, no one's bothered to tap into it aside from a little bit that lies beneath the Ascarlin Mountains. There's got to be someone crazy enough to venture down there, and even if it's terrifying enough to drive most adventurers who survive back up to the surface for the rest of their days, there's nothing saying that nobody's living down there. I have a couple ideas of my own, but I don't want to let the community let this untapped treasure trove go to waste.

With that said and done... I think that will be all. See you in my next installment.

JotN

... Death is a bit of a strange thing. Writers like me tend to throw it around a lot, killing off characters left and right without much thought as to what it really means, beyond how it affects the plot of our stories. It's only when it actually happens to the people we care about that we, as a species, truly recognize death for what it is. The end of a life. The fading of a perspective. The death of a person, and with them, their world. For if life is truly based on relative perspective and experience, then Islam is correct; to end someone else's life is the equivalent of destroying an entire world.

I'm going to be honest here. I didn't know Monty. I never met him. I never spoke with him. I never even paid much attention to him during his time with RoosterTeeth, really. But I respect his work, his ethic, his skill, and his drive, all of which drove him damn close to the top of his career path; there are few who can say they went from high school dropout to being hired by two different video game companies before finally finding the opportunity they've been searching for. On February 1st 2015, the world lost a good man with a fantastic future ahead of him. I just hope that his friends and his family can pull through; if the death of someone I never even met can bring me to tears, then I can only imagine how those who knew him personally must feel right now.

Within the next week or two, I will be writing up something in Monty's memory. I'm probably not going to be posting it on deviantART, though. In all likelihood, you'll be able to find it on fanfiction.net at Jarl of the North, as that's where the majority of my writing goes.

After that... well. We'll just have to see. But if one thing's for certain, I'm going to try to be more like Monty. I recognize that I need a better work ethic, but whether we met or not, he showed me that one can achieve anything if they put their mind to it.

My deepest condolences to Monty's friends and family, and my greatest thanks to Monty for all the work he has done.

Jarl of the North

Just entered lordmep's contest for his journal. Thought I may as well do the same thing. Links are below. I still haven't found a way to copy and paste the actual entries and accounts... Goddamn it.

fav.me/d5mc1tg Fel's Hunt

fav.me/d3cnqqx Kadar First Draft

fav.me/d3e9xcl A Fairy Dinner

lordmep.deviantart.com/ lordmep