this dream why um just to be awkward it's a bit mean in there yeah the crewel well oh man crewella too that's that is high what's the subtitle gonna be do you think what right lights bitch oh wait did the first one do well well enough to justify sequel apparently i mean it's a disney movie so despite its quality it probably did quite well yeah um fair enough and there were people apparently who liked the fashion in it oh yeah the fashion was my favorite part it's my favorite part it was the the way that fashion was portrayed in that movie is indistinguishable from randomness which is why i loved it so much my favorite kind of fashion is it because cruella with an r oh oh that's they might do well here thanks i hate it oh that's so horrible might they might just do it what would you rather see cruella too or captain marvel too i'm getting both so that wasn't the question j i think i would rather see captain marvel too cruella was like that was a really unpleasant experience at least captain marvel too is connected to a universe that like makes the good i might have projects i don't have that much investment in it anymore well yeah i was about to say that i invested in that one though i guess the thing is is that you can absolutely do a story with captain marvel and you could still do a story with the one that we've got in the mcu like there's a story that you can tell that i don't know what story i'm interested in for cruella you know well um what if cruella decides to apply for a management slash ownership of a local chick filet i feel like you could do a story about trying to become a manager of a chick filet because yeah because chick filet they're very particular about who they give you know management rights to you know who they franchise that out to they're very particular they have a they have a very good reputation when it comes to food service staff quality and the logistics of getting all those people fed and i would take care of this yeah you have to be really like tip top ship shape if you've ever gone to a chick filet it is almost always busy and the parking lots are designed in such a way that they can have multiple lanes of drive-thrus there are people the way that they have their system set up is atypical for most fast food places where people they'll have workers there generally like the film is just cruella narrating this to the audience yeah yeah she could put her a little spin on explaining the chick filet logistics and tactical manual to the to the average moviegoer who might not understand that a lot goes into making a chick filet work smoothly while also producing delicious chicken sandwiches you used to work at chick filet no no this is just rags this creative imagination it's just it's wonderful this is actually has nothing to do with imagination i've just noticed whenever i go to a chick filet right i you just sort of notice that it's ran in a different way than other fast food places uh often a lot of the times it'll be young people who are passing out food and taking numbers marking down which car needs what young people are disgusting yeah they are actually quite um that no here's that's the weird thing though they're actually quite not disgusting as far as young people go that is weird they're they're polite yeah they're polite and they're nice and they want to make sure that you have a good time the last one that i went to down in hearst texas uh about a week or so ago yeah i'm sure many of you have been there uh but there was this old guy as like the lobby greeter and he and he was just going around saying hi to everyone making sure things were okay asking how their day went and he'd pick up some stuff and adjust the chairs and he was just going around and his job was just to make sure everything was all right with everybody and that place was packed and boy they screwed them in and out this this podcast is not sponsored by chick filet just so we're live already well yeah yes and we are actually sponsored by quib gift though we are sponsored by quib gifts everyone if by the way if you put in your referral code efab at quibgift.com you will get 20% off your next uh month's worth of quib gift uh quib gift subscriptions yes but that's only for the first uh 93 people who uh sign up that's true seven have preemptively signed up because no 93 was no 93 was the number fight don't do this to me live fringy don't do this to me live fringy that's we have to appear we have to be here united brings trying to cover it up the reality is the seven of us here right now signed up because it's such an amazing deal so now it's down from 100 to 93 it's called insider trading and it's not illegal if you're not a government employee I think so I think it is I don't I don't know if we don't tell anyone using using referral codes isn't illegal but owning stock options is which I guess it's a problem we don't own stock in quib gift well you don't because yeah you give us not a publicly traded company it is um it's ran by the the quib family of course of which it gets its name the namesake of quib gift not the gift of family just so we're clear yeah quib and surprises international org quib core is your favorite member of the quibs flat quib oh I don't know them personally it's hard it's yeah and I feel like even if I did it would be hard to choose right like I wouldn't want to say really do it with real people here yeah I in a forum such as this I don't feel it would be appropriate to pick and choose our favorites amongst the quib the quib it's not about any individuals it's about the gift of quib uh gift uh quiblet yes when it comes to the quib family the whole is greater than the sum of its parts absolutely and isn't that just a wonderful kind of an insult no it isn't no I think that they would agree I think for instance if you put like the seven of us right individually we are very powerful however if you combine us we were we are powerful plus an unspecified sum of power what if we squabble and bicker and and and fail to achieve our goals due to that I mean I guess in this hypothetical maybe I suppose that probably wouldn't ever happen but in the event unlikely as it is that it did I don't know I hope that I die never knowing I can arrange that oh by like not telling me just take you out to the woods and I'm crying as I'm stroking my gun oh you don't know about the e-fap lore I get like a plus 10 terrain bonus in the woods that's not where you want to take me oh I'll take you to the desert then that's sort of still the wilderness in general all right fine I'll take you to don't take me to the desert that's where the Tuscan Raiders are and they're going to brutal the gun trains are in the desert if you take him he'll be so fascinated if you take him to Chick-fil-A he'll be so fascinated by how the whole thing runs he'll just be distracted and you know you can get I'll just be happy to be served by these wonderful pleasant people who give me delicious chicken sandwiches what one last good memory before you get put down yeah that's nice down like they've been carrying me around like you carry a dog around and then you put it down so it could go wherever it wants to go yeah that's yeah yeah that's all right look at it that way that's nice that's good I I appreciate people who can respect my independence mm-hmm welcome to eva everyone hello everyone episode 169 haha nice we're doing a sex fap in celebration of the sex number high five you guys 169 is a sex number yeah is that worth there's just a guy with an erection watching yes as you 69 with someone else it's a 169 that's what the kids call it yeah precisely what it is nice um what a what a special efap we've decided to do today where we are we're gonna we're gonna have a nice long chat between all seven of us all seven there's something that links the seven of us you see something nobody's all coming I figured it out between the weeks of figuring out what well efap episodes we're gonna be doing and I was like I think we all like stories I looked into it oh I thought this was about that's true yeah my parents are architects and so as a result I've grown up with a love of stories I get it I'm I can't wait to put you down so that I can go to different stories climb them stairs pass through the final story the we're gonna take you down a couple stories rags we're gonna take you down I'm gonna take you that's that's what architects say to each other when one of them's a little too haughty and and the other ones go we're gonna take you down a couple stories yeah you know like spiders say that they're gonna put don't in each other's eyes and architects say that they're gonna take each other down a few stories it all winds up it's pretty cool the whole culture there yeah um now I've I've put all of our names into a custom list randomizer so that I will ask questions and then it'll just tell us who's going to be answering in what order and that's the most structure I want for this in any way shape or form other than that everyone's job is to interrogate everyone so when someone says yeah I like this why is that a job where were you yesterday between 9 and 11 p.m 9 9 11 where were you on 9 11 I was in school I was in school I was playing because some of us J were you even alive when 9 11 happened yes I was alive when 9 11 happened but no I wasn't old enough to remember now a lot of people stopped being alive when 9 11 happened that's true that's because it's a tragedy it's a terrible tragedy what happened yeah 9 11 yeah yeah ask us on about that I agree I know who that is assen chicken man Mr. Hassan man we're on a roll already oh yeah so the idea here is I have provided four incredibly complicated questions to everyone here and uh they're pretty they're pretty broad you know and you can interpret away an answer as you wish but let us discover of the first question which you don't even know which order I'm asking them except doom appropriately because he's the one that inspired me to change it um so let me let me let me get there we go here's a list now what have we got oh well looks like well you know I'll just uh just share the list with you I feel nervous like I'm in like I'm in high school again and it's math class and I don't want to get called on because I don't know what the fuck numbers mean well I'm not going to hit you well I'm not like them rags I won't beat you but this this is the order that we've been provided by the gods of random listings um okay so question number one what is the most important element of storytelling J I think that it is cohesion and efficiency in conveying information to an audience wow you have to answer just straight up like that it's like you knew I was gonna ask you fuck you I've never heard these questions before I'm just very smart oh I had a feeling yeah um what do you mean by cohesion then so as far as I see it right when you're a writer um when you're writing this little little story to entertain a little cuck audience no um one of the main things that you're doing is um you're conveying information to the audience right that's the purpose of everything you're doing is you are sharing information through loads of different methods right if it's on screen then you can you can show them stuff and then you can they can also hear the words but you know if it's you know in prose you've got so many different methods of just word choice um things like that to communicate to your audience um any information that you want to and I think the effectiveness of how you communicate that information is one of the most fundamental aspects of storytelling that you can't really do without you can't just have one five minute scene to show that a character is angry right you show that a character is angry while you also characterize them in other ways while you also show how other characters are reacting to it while you also have cohesion with the world that you're building and you have cohesion with that's it's it's it's important stuff I disagree that's the end of my sentence it's time someone else has turned to hop in your critiques are poor well because you the second one you said was um like efficiency was I'm assuming that's getting the information across efficiency of information right is that like brevity um I suppose so but more so um accomplishing more than one thing with the same scene um you know you don't just have a scene that well you can't you can just have a scene for characterization but it's also important to think okay can I get um world building and plot in this same scene where I'm getting characterization because I don't know like a lot you probably think you know um I've seen a movie where a scene exists purely for exposition and plot and it's like oh can we get other stuff here as well though can we like maybe spend some time learning about the characters because I like the characters was one of the things about like good dialogue writing is achieving more than one thing yeah if you can if you can advance the plot while also developing character or tying it into theme or uh using like subtext to like apply more than what you know than what is on the surface like there's a lot of ways to try and condense it down or achieve yeah more than one thing at a time in all of the stories I've consumed as well I don't think I've seen anything that's painfully bad where I'm also able to go man look at all of the stuff this one line is doing though like yeah it's it seems to be a hurdle that um that it really takes talent and understanding of other forms of writing what other aspects of writing to really uh hop over that little hurdle um well is it so is it always preferable to have more things achieved not necessarily um not necessarily no but you you want to have a reason for what you're doing and when would you say like it makes more sense to limit it to one thing or fewer than than more when you really want to have a scene to have focus um you don't want anything I was the office thing right um because it is sort of um if you're using because like I was I was I was ready to say like yeah when you want to see to have focus you know you don't want to be bothering with world building right now but like the whole point of it is that like um it's like you want to focus on character for a scene if um if it is done naturally and with cohesion then you're not going to be distracted by the fact there's world building going on at the same time because the world building is just a natural result of all of the character that you're seeing as well like you know the turn of phrase that a character might use is also cohesive with the world and and not just their frame of mind that the the writer is trying to convey at that one time uh I think I guess it's it's always important to never lose sight of cohesion within your story um and then have things being congruent with each other as a result of your hyper focus on one aspect so if you are trying to characterize you know if you're trying to character if you're trying to characterize a character that your world suffers or that your plot suffers then you've got you know an issue but if you if you just if you've just got a scene where oh no world building happens to be relevant here um even though I think you're probably always going to get some form of world building in the attitudes of your characters let's say um oh let's say no plot is happening in this scene right no plot is happening in this game. No plot is happening in this game. She's got two characters talking. Oh just me? All right. Wait, where are you up to Rags? What's that? I don't get it. I'm just doing what I'm told but it's fine I was the only one who did it's not worthy of mention further you can carry on. Did I say say? I did say say the night. You did. Let's say that no plot is happening in this scene. No plot is happening. You know what Jay? We're the only ones having fun so I wouldn't even worry about it. You enjoyed the bit. Yeah my fun is watching you do it.  I sound described from that one Rags. Rags just got our back. I think as long as every scene has gratuitous sex and attract by Aerosmith you're probably fine. Yeah that's a good rule of thumb yeah. I don't want to close my eyes. Oh my god it sounds like the room. I was thinking of that. The one like talking about cohesion I don't think it's necessarily achieving a lot of stuff in one scene is a really valuable skill to have as a writer but it's not always necessary. It's just necessary to not forget aspects of your story and to let them suffer just because you're focusing on something else. Everything is an interwoven tapestry. I think it's particularly important in film because the main constraint is time. You just do not have very much time and a story needs to accomplish a lot of different things so pretty much always I mean I can think of exceptions like the beginning of Wally's an example where there's not that like it's very character and world building focused and very little else is going on. Like there's almost no dialogue. It really depends on what you're trying to achieve with your film. Yeah but I mean the number of exceptions are pretty small. I mean I know from having to try and write myself that this is exactly something you're paying attention to. It's like okay we've got plot goals and character goals right and this scene needs to be interesting on its own and all these things need to happen all at the same time.  It just kind of stops in its tracks right. It's just like what are we doing here and like you don't want to reach a point where at the end I always feel like when you think about a lot of the best stories very few of them waste time. Like it's very it's very rare that you think about yeah we could have done without that scene. Like I think about a lot of the best films. It's like man you're really making effective use of like every moment of time that you have to advance in some way. Yeah that's that's gravity. Yeah I guess it's the idea that like a moment wasted is it's like well you could have used that moment to push us a little bit further to add like a little bit more I guess supporting evidence for like some main points or to start building up maybe like an adjacent like thematic element to run through the story.  Yeah one of my hotter takes about film is that when you're watching a film I can usually tell whether it's like exceptional within about like 30 seconds even if nothing in particular is going on because like they will have gone so far out of their way to try and pack as much as possible into that 30 seconds right. And yeah like great films make incredibly good use of their time in terms of storytelling and conveying information. That's not that's not pacing that's not you know as many things as possible have happened within 30 seconds it's just the amount of information that you as the audience are learning right. Yeah because like you know country for old men is very little is being communicated it's just the way it's you know the way things are being communicated is incredibly good right. Yeah where you can draw things from will tell you what you're in for. Is that like I is that the point that you're making Jay like that the way in which it's coming I mean honestly I think I was struggling to chew I was struggling to choose just one aspect of stories and I thought hey if I say cohesion that's kind of all of them isn't it. Kind of because yeah that's all about world and theme yeah everything needs to be cohesive. Yeah I mean treating it as treating it as an interwoven thing as you can't just well you can just do one at a time but understanding that most scenes are probably going to be more effective if you're doing more than one. If you're and doing and doing one in a truly you know effectively written story taking care of one of these things is going to help you also take care of the others because the characters you know it's going to be going to be informed by the world in which they live and they're going to be informed by the events of the plot they're going through all that kind of jazz. It's going to be hard to have a really amazing scene that's like advancing the plot without also reinforcing the characters yeah you know setting an interesting tone and like matching up with pacing and yeah. I mean I'm sure there are examples in the wild of like scenes that have advanced the plot that have like nothing to do with our main characters that we're actually focusing on and it's just like I don't know we cut to the we cut to the king of the land who is not a character in the story but he's making an important decision and it's shown here that how you know that the decision he makes and some very important to the story you know I'm sure that that's happened in in great stories but usually you know you're in a situation where if you're seeing plot happen to the characters that's informing your impression of the characters and your understanding of them. You can't just have plot happen to the characters and not learn about the characters that doesn't work. And something that's going to something is going to kind of come up with this question is that there is very little if anything that applies to every single story. It's like most of the things that you could think that would be good almost all the time like you can find an exception yeah but like you I like to think of things in terms like actionable intelligence it's like how useful is this to think about how much does this help me write or how much does this help me understand films and yeah that's that's definitely up there in terms of things to pay attention to for sure. Unless anyone wants to poke a prod a bit more on Jay we could move to the next contestant. Stop poking and prodding me. Hey Rags. Hello. What is the most important element of storytelling? Well I thought about this for an amount of time and I think when we talk about most important kinds of things of really any kind it's important to go super super foundational almost maybe to levels that you don't typically even think to think about because they're sort of assumed and take it for granted but I think that the most important thing that a story needs to have in terms of its elements is that it needs to be comprehensible.  If it's not comprehensible then nothing else really will matter even in dreams right dreams are nonsensical and weird and they're not quite right and they just don't work like normal but even then there's a part of you that comprehends what's happening in a dream even as as bizarre as it is it's a rearrangement of details and places and things and stuff that you're subconscious is mish-mashing together but you still understand it in some way and in some level and I think that a story needs to make sure that whenever it puts something out whenever it has a character doing a thing or it exists in a place or portrays the passage of you know time and events leading to other events there has to be a level of a brain must be able to take that and recognize it for something that's happening. Think about brain. Yeah brain. I wish directors at amateur film festivals understood that.  When it's comprehensibility as a how do you think that comprehensibility applies or changes when we talk about different mediums of storytelling like a book versus a film or a video game. Oh it's so hard to tell because like Jim's Joyce is not very comprehensible right but people have regarded it as one of the best options. I mean I guess it's a question of like so comprehensibility it's like so what what happens when I decide to write some prose that is a little more tricky right like why how do I present the argument that I shouldn't tell everything as total matter of fact if uh comprehensibility and like achieving maximum comprehensibility is like the most important aspect of storytelling. I might have worded it a little poorly I think it's because it's not really something that we think about because it's so we take it for granted so much but if someone like oftentimes we use the words making sense and nonsense in ways that are a little bit higher tier than what we really mean like when you see someone who's now no I think a dream sort of is a decent enough example where dreams don't make sense but they also kind of do and where you draw the line and yeah you understand what's happening in a dream and a lot of times you don't even recognize you're in it so it makes some level of sense so it's not really not completely unsensical and we want a story because you have you have to use really an idiom medium whether it's using text in a in a book or images and sounds in a movie or in the game as well if you can't convey that information and if the person just can't grasp what you're actually trying to tell them not and I'm not meaning that in terms of themes or anything even in universe we're just talking about this is still in the meta of being able to just convey these sorts of things to another person if you can't even do that then it's it's kind of all for nothing unless it's only something that's meant for yourself and even then I don't even know if you could design something incomprehensible for yourself because you're the mind that kind of created it for yourself so you know where it's all coming from I guess um a question I would have is the show don't tell right that's always the appeal to the idea that there is something to be gained from not presenting something directly rather hinting at it subtly through the way that a character reacts to something being said or the subtext like the way that they respond to a situation or something that's like kind of just unspoken about the world how do we reconcile the idea of conveying information in a way that's clear and easy to understand with the fact that a lot of the best stories will convey their information in an indirect way um that is more effective at getting the like more more more I guess for lack of a better word interesting to watch or read I think we're still going a little bit to um like whenever you whenever you're watching a story and you see a character do a thing or say a thing that has a meaning that is not yet apparent yet or that character is operating on information that the viewer doesn't have yet whenever you have verbal or dramatic irony in a story or a situation that's all still going past like all of that is built off of an even more foundational concept of things being comprehensible you understand that a character is speaking you understand that there is a space in which a person or an object is existing you understand that your senses can detect all of these things and you can make sense of them through what you understand about the world and language and what objects generally mean or what their purpose normally is I guess um what I'm getting at is like if we take starry night and we put it against like a hyper realistic super super detail just like baroque painting of a night sky could someone make the argument that the baroque painting is more comprehensible than starry night and that if so that there is something to be said about it being stronger comprehensible sure but I would say that we're talking about elements of a story and I think that an image is not the same story that a typical I would say that like if you take a piece of art that it is a story like a painting is a story in a sense yeah I would say there are two different things in the way that a like a surrealist it's all right so surrealism is generally the the artistic movement and the style of surrealism is often described as internally contradicting and nonsensical even though if you have one it's not contradicting in the same way that a story can be contradicting if you're talking about generally imagery like you could have two symbols that are next to each other that mean different things and that could be explained to someone as this image is contradictory but that is used in a different sense then if you're watching a story and two things will contradict each other at different points in the film that is a different form of that kind of concept so in terms of a story like a a narrative structure that exists within a movie within a book within a game I think those are kind of a different they're different but similar to how a single still image can tell a story right I mean I'm inclined to agree because like when we talk about stories it's you know the fundamentalist is is a series of events and I guess it's a bit different to think about what a series of events means in a still image in terms of what you pull from it yeah as a series of events yeah I mean it's still image can convey a series of events I think I think it can I guess it's interesting to think about the difference in the way yeah it can in a different way fun like if you like linear storytelling right where it's like this is the first scene this is the second scene this is the third scene but then I guess it becomes more interesting to think about like a non-linear story a story that is presented you know like you crud a lot you know from beginning to end in terms of time but but like it jumps around a different time in the story yeah even even things that are like told in non-linear fashion or in very strange you know structure sets for movies or really any form of media um I guess I don't know if I could say any blanket stuff on how that sort of relates to this I suppose it might be just I'd have to see specifics or and even then all of these things would rely on is the information able to be understood but what would be an example that you'd give for like incomprehensibility and are there degrees of incomprehensibility that we'd be talking about when it comes to stories let's say someone all right uh I can just make a quick example here quick question would you define like the character's not knowing which way is up as an entire faction in star wars would that almost be incomprehensible because it's just like an impossibility or we talk about something strange it's strange you bring up this example because while I was just kind of idly thinking about this concept that's something that sort of popped into my head and I asked really does it make sense that somebody doesn't know which way is up well I guess if you get super basic and technical I guess it makes sense that somebody wouldn't know which way is up I guess it's possible that someone could do it I mean that that is a that's a concept that could be that that could be an attribute of someone's state of mind but it doesn't make sense in the same way that these people in this situation would not know which way is up so I guess it depends on how deep you want to go with it like it's not it's not one of those um like explicit kinds of like I guess if it's I guess we often I feel like I need a phrase or a word to sort of really get into the nitty gritty of what I'm talking about in terms of making sense as a concept or being comprehensible because of the way about clarity about clarity um kind of things have to be clear in a sense that you have you can comprehend them but if someone is like let's say you had one person who was like actually speaking just gibberish and making noises right that's not comprehensible there you're there there's there's really not anything being conveyed there it is just noise it's interesting to say that though in the context of an event I was going to say in the context of like an exorcism that would be comprehensible in the sense that we know what's happening but we don't know what this person means or is trying to say necessarily like there's degrees of comprehension there I guess yeah like I was I was going to follow that up with a person who's just talking to you normally and they're still making noises and sounds but you can recognize that these noises and sounds relate to the concepts of objects and abstracts and you can understand what they're trying what information they're trying to get across like how these two things are similar but vastly different and how you can interpret them and what they actually mean I was curious about um especially in relation to using the way comprehension but how does Lovecraft sort of move into this then when being represented in stories I don't know I suppose it depends on the the specific thing especially because if it's Lovecrafty and stuff like how do you truly convey to someone the something incomprehensible all right especially to the point where it makes you go and say you know spooky tentacles that's very great and how do you really get that idea across well there's a good example I guess arguably you probably couldn't and it relies on the person to think of an abstract thing that doesn't really exist and how powerful they can sort of lose themselves in that imagery whatever it is to that person I think the father is a good example here because it's it's very clearly communicating to the audience the experience of having dementia and kind of losing your mind in a way but the actual like the actual parts of story in some sense aren't comprehensible or there's something unclear and that's kind of the point that's how it accomplishes the whole the reason that the father works is because of the parts of it that you can comprehend so that you know that something else is wrong you wouldn't be able to have that sense of of of cohesion from his life missing if you didn't understand the other aspects that were leading you towards that conclusion right so your ability to comprehend what is happening is how you make sense of the incomprehensibility of what's happening like we stick with him throughout that story as well he's quite consistent with us yeah yeah the same way that mauler brought up it's really kind of strange at this point but mauler brought up specifically the not knowing which way is up thing in the same way as I was thinking about this the father is specifically another example that I floated around in my head where the character I actually forget his name in the in the story Anthony Anthony he in each one of those isolated events those instances for lack of a for it to use a gamer term each one of those instances he yeah it's the wrong inward instance but he he he recognizes people as people maybe not the right ones but he can recognize that they're talking to him he can respond to them he knows that he's in a space and can move around yeah but each one of those instances isn't connected in a way that is comprehensible to him but each one of those isolated he can sort of like exist and it might it might not all make sense to him especially the context of it all but he can still sit on the couch and talk to this person and respond to them and think about the things that they say and he recognizes that he's in a place I think it's really important that you point out that he can still recognize a person as a person because that's the kind of thing that that has to be there have to have to be more basic consistencies like that that make the story comprehensible you know he doesn't he doesn't start he doesn't mistake like some guy for the fridge yeah if you got if you if you if you took it to that level of absurdity the story probably wouldn't be you probably wouldn't understand the story as a viewer yeah like you wouldn't know what's even being it would be hilarious but there is an aspect of you you have to be able to get these ideas across and you have to be comprehensible enough to where just other people can get it there is something to get there's something to latch on to that that ears can hear it that eyes can see it that it can be felt and that it can be translated into ideas which is generally something you don't even think about doing because it's so common place and it's so basic that it's it's I don't even know if I can think of an example of a story where it's not even at that kind of level but it's all foundational to it well the the other question I was going to ask is like I'm assuming your answer is only going to be that this is tough to figure out a lot of the time but you know like do we need to explain what a gun does in a movie so that everyone can comprehend it and it's like probably not but should we explain what sci-fi weapons do though when they're brand new this is this is the level of meta knowledge that we take into movies that's yeah it's inescapable really like oh like oh the meta knowledge of knowing English oh all the care you take that information with you the film doesn't even tell you what these words are you know it you have to I think it's just a necessary aspect of being able to tell a story in these mediums I don't think it can function without it if we just just through utility oh absolutely it's just hard to draw the line I suppose right it is yeah it if you yes stuff that isn't I think there's a decent most of I think most of us even the people we cover on eFap even the people who disagree with us I think there's a a general agreed upon line and it's a thick line it's not I don't think it's a thin line I think it's a really thick line of stuff that is acceptable meta knowledge guns are a good example we know what guns are and what they do but if you presented us with some strange piece of sci-fi technology that doesn't look like a gun and it doesn't seem to be treated like one we don't know what it is what it does I think most of that we could generally agree upon yeah even if we get like weapons that look like fleshy or like abstract they're still being handled like a gun like they don't put them on their feet and start using them with their toes or something yeah and you have the benefit if they don't necessarily have to explain them if they show them to do things we will pick that up and we'll assume that is what their limits are I immediately think of the Rick and Morty I was just thinking about that imagine the magical guy has this little flimpy thing and just holds it like a gun you killed my gun or South Park where they have walkie-talkies that's actually I don't want to just say how fucking great that example is it's the time copy pulls a thing it's like a squelchy thing and it looks like he's a bit like a gun that they I think they put their hands up right because they don't know what it is they're just yeah no what is that and then you like kind of cocks it yeah well I like this one because it's not it's like in universe it probably doesn't make sense that this thing is that is entirely well no it makes sense it's not it doesn't contradict anything but it seems unlikely to me that something would exist that's so fundamentally different from a gun that it's fleshy and gooey and killed there's an appropriate word to use for it but it's still cocked like a normal gun like a normal gun is how they communicate to the audience what it is and what's going on and you know it's it's it's it gets away with that because of the tone that it's going for really I think well that's a question how do jokes factor into the idea of comprehensibility if like for instance it not comprehending it is the point well yeah like if a joke if the joke is that that doesn't make sense is are we talking about why works you can probably extend this to just absurdist content in general things that are that are like that Xavier renegade angel kind of just wacky absurdity right where you can have comprehensible it's a very very clever show but it takes place in this sort of strange absurd world you know where individual parts you can recognize as commentary you could understand the lines you know what the characters are saying and you could see how they behave the ways they do in this crazy wacky world but the whole thing is just it's it's a it's a loose kind of what we would call nonsense in a way there has to be something to latch on to I think is probably the the best broad answer that I can give off the top well yeah I think in all the absurdist comedies they still start grounded almost always to give us a canvas before they start making things insane yeah you know Rick and Morty has Rick and Morty who are point of view characters that we can understand the perspectives of yeah it's yes it's not you know a flimpy gun interacting with a wet crumbo even something like the holy mountain even something like the holy mountain starts off a lot more grounded than it eventually gets to um but yeah I guess why not let's let us move who is next in the in the randomizer it was free sorry just to add to that the um uh regarding comprehensibility the love crafty and approach to horror is an interesting thing to bring to that because uh I think part of the reason that horror works is because there's a layer of incomprehensibility on it where you the the monster or whatever the threat is doesn't really fit within the bounds of logic you don't really know what the characters are up against yeah and uh the as I think the the thing that always must be comprehensible is like what the main character is going through and the experience of the people in the story is like you're latching on point yeah not necessarily all the things the main character is like seeing and reacting to but you have to just understand where they're at all the time at the very least there's some things where like we were talking about incomprehensibility is kind of the point I think what alien strength was back in the day before we got rid of was like when it burst out of um his chest I think all the characters are horrified by the blood and guts but also just the the scenario this yeah this creature just burst out of his rib cage like what in the fuck um yeah and sometimes that works horror fucks this up all the time because they put they show too many other cards and like they'll show the big dumb CGI alien with like a stinger sound and say oh my god fuck on like I wish you would just like use the the power of the audience's imagination here to kind of enhance the horror rather than just like show me yeah I wish you earned that reveal that we've been waiting for yeah instead of rely on the fact that fear of the unknown is incredibly powerful and effective and so yeah unexplained is not the same as incomprehensible exactly true that's true yes it makes me think of um near the end of alien where Ripley spots it like hiding in uh among like pipes and different like storage things and you can't even quite make out where it what it is if you know what I mean because it's covered in what looks to be similar things to its own body um yeah right so I'd go as far as saying I guess that it's good it's the line at that point between unexplained and incomprehensible because at that point you're just like terrified of whatever this fucking thing is and what it might be able to do yeah I agree with that I think with the thing with Lovecraftian horror is that you can't quite explain it even if you tried yeah it relies on a very I guess the whole it relies on you not knowing what it is you're supposed to be afraid of in a sense which isn't which is an odd place to be in when you're trying to communicate things to an audience as a storyteller it's almost at odds with the whole point yeah well let us move to the next person someone said like what's the point in randomizing it if you're asking everyone the same question I was like because I don't know what order to ask everybody we're not only asking everybody the same questions well yeah technically we asked the same first question but it always is branching off I like how much we branched off so far it's neat the the value as well dear chatter and the random order is that by listening to other people go first that's making me think about yeah that's great bastard in which case I'm wondering how bringing what is the most important element of storytelling um I think that the most essential element of storytelling is character I think the character is is sort of like at the heart of storytelling um so much so that I think even if you were to have a story without a character you could even go so far as to say that like the POV of the narrator or even the POV of you factors into it but I mean in a general sense I think that what we want and get out of storytelling is facilitated principally through seeing characters in a situation and how they react to it and how they grow or potentially don't grow from the experience the like at the core of pretty much like all great stories is strong characters um I in a in a I guess uh like if you were to boil it down to its basics it's like people reacting to situations or other people is essentially what a story is about if we are to say that a story at its most base element is cause and effect a causes b causes c causes d um but I I think that the the the investment and the reason why we're interested in the reason why we get something out of it is to see people react to those situations and not not necessarily people write it because of course you could be like robots or aliens or um animals um but I think it is ultimately person with traits how do they respond to this situation or how do they respond to that situation uh how do they respond to situations that are challenging for them how do they respond to situations that are easy for them how do they respond when uh somebody else uh who they like or dislike is challenged or has something happened to them um it's like that exploration of reactions to things and how that changes us or the characters rather is like what it's kind of like what I'm there for um that transformative element of like how characters change across time what they learn yeah you can absorb a lot of value from that I think that's that's what uh that's like what that's kind of what we're there for yeah can a story exist without characters that was gonna be my question yeah like koya koya kawaii whatever I I guess it I guess the thing is is like if there was a story with no characters um just does the the narration p o v count I think it does uh there's no idea it's going to be giving perspective on stuff that happens almost inherently by the choice of words even that that was kind of where I was getting at is like is there is their character in prose is their character in shot composition uh is their character in sound like what what what get why are we is the decision to focus on something does that is that indicative of a perspective in a certain sense like why are we seeing this story but also like what what even story can you have without any any like entity to perceive it so I guess like a rock falling off a cliff and landing with another rock I think that's I think that's kind of where I would get at I guess is that like story is the reason why story means anything is because of perspective um if there were no people there wouldn't be there wouldn't be stories there just be things happening yeah you can have like a I don't know you could have what if if every mind in the universe disappeared would books still be stories why would Harry Potter still be a story without people and meanings to interpret from it it would just be ink on a page it's like the perspective is what gives it um the meaning as a story you can have like a non-narrative audio visual experience like uh Oyanoskatsi but I don't think I would call it a story um I mean it's like you're you're experiencing something if I were describing the events of world war two in like a really clinical fashion and mainly just nations not even really mentioning any individuals like where they move what damage they sustained and stuff I'm assuming that would be considered a story and then at that point the character at best I suppose as you've said would be the narrator uh well I guess uh maybe the nations themselves I guess the characters a collective of nations right yeah like like like and glorious bastards more basic and glorious about it you go ahead go ahead yeah I was just going to say and glorious bastards I think it's a good example of where the actual bastards themselves don't have much individual character that's distinct from one another they sort of exist as a collective like there's there there are unique things about the individual members but the the traits of the group itself are shared by almost everyone and it's way more important than any individual so yeah like characters can be groups yeah yeah in some cases um characterizations are elements of world building so every single character that exists in a story will have certain qualities right and that that's sort of what defines like the world building of a Woody Allen movie for example or like the things that are true about every character in that film that aren't necessarily going to be true about other stories so yeah characters have to be like one individual person even with nations you could actually get to the point of progressing to the story and everyone starts to feel like particular countries are underdogs one of them super aggressive one of them is greedy like yeah what is the character of a location you know like New York has a character that uh that you can pull from it as a location or like a quiet town you know is that just the same word or does it if you're talking about nations in a war you have entities with clear motivations there and I think it's perfectly valid to call those characters yeah because yeah like a character like having an agent with a mind is different of a character in a way that you could say oh this building has a lot of character to it well it depends how fundamental do we want to go I mean you as an individual are comprised of billions of living cells and there are organisms within you but like we don't really think about those little entities when we think about the whole that is you could you just extrapolate that more to like the whole that is a city or a nation yeah all right I don't I I think a mind is distinctive enough from a from a building or something constructed that isn't an agent to make a very difference I guess what I mean is like when we talk about the consciousness of an individual versus I guess like what you pull from a collective like a town right like a I guess the reason why I would say that it depends on how vaguely we wanted to find character but I mean you could say that like South Park that the town of South Park has a character it's this weird absurd town filled with neurotic crazy people and a small group of like kids who are much more observant and perceptive of the world and so it's often the interactions of like the core kids so Stan Kyle Cartman and Kenny who all have their own distinct personalities often having to interact with the town like the character of the town and so I think I have a clear example of a story that some of the people in this call know that doesn't have any characters in the conventional sense and that is it's not it's not really a rigid story but Stellaris yeah it's the closest thing we have to characters like sometimes we get told that like a person did a thing they're not characters in in the sense you know that they're treated more like events more so than anything you don't get that perspective of what they're like as people most of the time well one of the factions is technically one character that's true cloned I guess now I'm stuck I'm starting I'm wondering if like this is why I like this conversation I'm wondering if character is describing what I mean or if it's more so just fundamentally perspective that like that like it becomes a story through perspective I think it's well how would you define story well I guess that's the thing when we were talking about this when I because if we talk about like the most inextricable element from storytelling it is a sequence of events like it is a then b it's not a like there's it seems like some some kind of progression of some sort is like fundamental the ones you pull it from that like if this if I just say Bob like is that a story versus Bob walk to the store it's like that that becomes a story by virtue of he did something that was like a and then b but I mean if you just say Bob there is a story Tammy incredibly loosely there is a story implied by like Bob oh that's someone's name someone must have been named Bob right well there is a sequence of events you can infer to be a little pedantic Bob going to the store isn't a story you telling me that Bob went to the store is a story because I would say that that's that's that's the reason why I'm starting to lean more towards perspective right because the story I would say is an account of events not the events themselves in the same way that a map is different than the place well I think that was what I was getting at right like if there were no human beings there would be a universe that has caused an effect going on where things happen but it's like but no stories would be told because no one's telling them I guess they wouldn't be described as stories anymore because there was no there was no entity or perspective to to interpret it and I guess it's like when we think about stories in the conventional sense we are thinking about people in a situation reacting to things it's like their worldview their values are the perspective that they are bringing to the story and to see those perspectives challenged um that's like that's like what we're there for and so like when we think about great stories we're usually thinking about stories where people are put in difficult situations or I mean the suicide squad is a really strong example right it's a story with a pretty nonsense plot that the characters are all reacting in ways that make sense given what we know about them I think um I want to as well to enhance your point about it being about perspective is that I think um that you totally can have um like if I said if I told you a story about um some like beautiful natural formation that then um stood for like a million years like a geology textbook like like well yeah I suppose so um it's this beautiful natural thing that stood for a million years and then it was just um destroyed uh you know out of the blue random avalanche came down just from freak chance wasn't likely to happen but it did and it was destroyed and it's like it's definitely you can take from that story but you can only take stuff from that story because you have the perspective like this is an old thing like without without beautiful uh in that story I feel like you've not really got much that you can take from it it's like oh a thing you it was there and now it's not anymore okay yeah that's an account like Scarlett Johansson crossing the avalanche um well so yeah Jay you're saying like so if if we had instead described series of rocks have been moving around in different positions and some have fallen as a result of wearing up and tearing up of air and water damage or something like that that isn't a story until I start adding stuff like the beautiful rocks were destroyed by I mean I guess I mean you can call it a story if you want but it's like I don't see the value in it until that you and oh the potential value in it until you start adding someone's perspective on the events well one of humans can do a lot of interpret it right like I suppose I hear something to add to that we we let's give the rock a name you know like if we go we tell this we tell the story like a rock you know a rock got eroded versus a rock called you could Dwayne Johnson so yeah to make the point clear Dwayne Johnson is a rock and the rock got eroded by the water like if it was like people are going to immediately personify the rock because it has a name it's kind of a related subject that probably gives my perspective on this so my definition of art is the intentional communication of the unspeakable so there's two important things there one it has to be intentional right so I wouldn't consider a tree art but if you take a picture of a tree that's art right because you made choices about how you're going to take the picture and you know there's if you take a professional photographer there there's going to be something about the way they take the picture that's going to be way more meaningful than how an idiot like me would take it you know I don't have any idea how to properly take a picture of a tree to communicate things right and then beyond that there needs to be something that you're communicating that isn't straightforward right so like bob crosses the street I mean I don't even know if I would call that you know it's just it's just relaying some very very straightforward information with nothing left out but if I'm trying to evoke an emotion in you I couldn't just say you need to feel anger right it's like you know that's been left out that I haven't said why he went to the shops that we don't know why he went to the shops or how far it was to get to the shops or what time of day it is I mean there's tons of things that there's tons of things that could happen it's just you need to be communicating something at least in my opinion that isn't you know just a base level relaying of information well I got some element of the experience I'm fine with the necessity of an agent but I like so if someone just drew a square on the wall that isn't art because it's too basic or I mean it is it is it communicating something okay when you say okay in the context and the meaning of the square right that's what I was going to say so is there something about it that isn't relayed by saying there's a picture of a square on a wall like if the answer to that question is yes then it's art that's my answer is it would it be possible to not have it that way can I is it even possible for someone for an agent to draw a square and have it not be art then well I guess here's one like I mean an architectural like a floor plan that is entirely technical and exactly precise in a way that you look at it and you know exactly what it's like I feel like I'd still call that art right there's an artist tree to the creation of that uh that plan I'm telling you that as a child I made one of those for fun so yeah I guess I was a really fun child I had lots of friends I think I think like stuff that is matter of fact can still be art like I don't know that um I guess I would agree with Rags I agree with the first definition that like artist is like defined by the fact that it's like an agent exerting something on the world but uh I'm not sure that I think stuff can be spoken and still be arts that is communicated I feel like but I feel like you're on the right track to something I just think that there's it's more fundamental but I'm not quite sure what it is do we say part of it was that they intend meaning to be drawn from the thing uh just that yeah it's like it's created for an audience like that you're trying you're creating something with the purpose of evoking a reaction I don't agree with that I feel like we can have art if there's one human being in a room and he's the only human being in in existence like if he drew a a box like even if he is the only person who will ever see it it would still count as art what would he count as the audience then he would be the audience um um so I guess at that point it would be that what I was going to say is I think a person can accidentally create art though um well I guess the idea would be that um that when we talk about intentionality it's not like the intentionality to create art but like that there is that there is an agent who made a decision to do something right like it's like it has to be made by somebody maybe it's like the more fundamental just I just want to just to be clear right so like someone's just doing a fucking some kind of job where they're clearing paint off the walls or something stripping it stripping it all and then they they look they take a few steps back and go oh shit and they've accidentally painted like the Mona Lisa by doing it I would just be curious what it would be classify that as I would do I think I think that it becomes art the second that they decide to um that they decide to um note it as something unusual or worthy of being seen right if that's the case then would I like looking great rags what are you wait hold on because yeah I was about to say if I go outside and see a nice looking tree well yeah just so just that let's let's go back that become art I think I think maybe let's go back just a little bit um so to the wall thing um because I I'm gonna hold fast to the an agent being required mm-hmm I don't know where I sit on whether it's intentional or not but I think the question here will be in this example of the wall in the paint and then there was an intention to do something thus their scraping of the paint and whatnot does the intention require that they were attempting to express themselves or can the expression of their work maybe not their personality but just by them doing work that is sort of an expression of yourself in some way does the intentionality come from trying to express yourself or trying to just do the thing and incidentally something that is artistic or merged from that I feel like that there has to be incidental art that that just has to be something that exists um like it I feel like that's that has to happen right where you can do something inadvertently that creates something that appeals to you aesthetically then so moving to let's take the let's take that example which is very very hands-on and let's change it to something where there's a little bit more of a removal between the quote unquote art and artist um somebody let's take this construction worker and he accidentally bumps into a bag of gravel and it spills out on the ground and it creates a picture of a human face right logically possible just unlikely and now it has occurred um is that art I mean that's what I was asking too because I'm not sure what I think yet I think I don't know I think in the loosest possible sense that the act of um that in itself is an art but the act of noticing it and framing it as something special that becomes uh art in a very loose sense so when I was thinking about this a lot this is years ago literal decade ago I asked a lot of people the question is a tree art and my experience was that there was a 100 percent correlation between whether someone believed in a material creator deity and whether they said yes basically anybody who doesn't believe that there's like that the tree was created by god to be like 20 or 30 enough people to where it's non-trivial so like if if someone thinks the tree was created by god to be beautiful they'll usually say it's art and or in my case they all said it's art and if someone doesn't believe that it was created that way nobody would say it's art right so like does anyone disagree with that like do you think that a tree is art just because it's beautiful no no I think that um what you can say is let's say um some let's say some person comes and finds like a beautiful tree standing somewhere right and they say they say someone else hey come over here and look at this beautiful tree I think that in the act of doing that is in a way art yeah yeah I feel a bit pretentious but that's what I think that's the picture of a tree exactly we are dealing with a horrifically broad term that's why it's tough yeah that's difficult with art yeah can you like so yeah your your definition of art is what again the intentional communication of the unspeakable and the purpose of this is the unspeakable means that there's something that's being communicated that isn't like there's a reason you have to create art to express it you can't just say it so like if I draw um whoa can I not sorry actually I uh finish finish what you were saying first um so so like if so like my example is if I just go take a shitty picture of a tree there's probably nothing there that I that you don't get by just saying it's a shitty picture of a tree but if you were to find it like a professional photographer who did who you know went out of their way to try and create something beautiful there would be something there you can't just say it's a picture of a tree you need to look at it right and it like if I'm evoking an emotion in you I can't just say you feel anger that has to be evoked by creating a stimulus that would you know arise anger within you and and you can't just say oh you know um it makes you feel angry that that wouldn't communicate the same experience you have to actually go look at the art like basically there's a reason you have to make it as art you can't just express it directly there's something indirect um that elevates it above other things like me just drawing a square on a wall like it's not going to evoke anything in anyone and you can understand the whole thing by me just saying I as an unskilled person you know scribble the stupid square on my wall there's nothing that's left out right but if you had someone who's an apple what if it did go my question would be can we go more fundamental than that because I think like I I think um if someone like draws a square in terms of what it is in reality it is like atoms on atoms in a universe filled with atoms right like like fundamentally it's just like it's it's um it's just things but the perspective of an individual who looks at that change like when when we say the unspeakable is that not like could you just say that it's like fundamentally is perspective right that the the interpretation like the human perspective on anything as opposed to what it is which is just things happening in reality I'm saying that I'm saying that if I write down a grocery list this is an art because there's nothing that's well there's no meaning here besides you know I need eggs and you know free like whatever imagine a hundred years from now like if we lived in a post-scarcity society right and someone looks back on that shopping list and they start thinking about man he had to like compile a list of you know like could you imagine a hypothetical scenario where like someone sure but it's what we based on differing information well I don't know that I would use the word art but again the act of displaying it in a context completely different from the context in which it was created would be part of what made that you know it's like a picture of a tree you know it's not just that there's a tree there's a way that it's being displayed and interpreted that would give it a meaning beyond you know just being a tree you said just being a shopping list if I took a shitty picture of a tree nothing is achieved compared to me saying it's a shitty picture of a tree but like what if someone says like they look at your picture and they go oh and you go what and they're like I get it it's that's pretty awesome man you're like I have no idea what you're talking about and they go well isn't this about like the nature of shelter and what it means to be oh and you're like no and so I'm assuming you're saying the component of your intention has to be there uh I mean first of all we're describing an event that is like preposterously unlikely I think but it's not even necessarily about my it's not even necessarily about my intention you think it's unlikely that you could take a photo of a pick of a tree and that someone could find meaning in it I think it is unlikely that if I randomly took a picture of a tree with no understanding of photography that you would find any meaningful number of people who would call it art right you can always find someone I don't see how relevant how many people found it art or not so I mean it's an inter subjective thing so it's pretty relevant I don't know if this is a tangent but um in relation to the the shopping list someone in chat said that's not art the shopping list is a primary historical source um if we just have like a historic if we have something that was like a matter of fact like document retelling of something and then we just like jump a hundred years into the well I don't even know if we need like a time jump right like if I write something down the font that I use expresses my personality yeah that was my immediate thing right why did I make the decisions to put this information here why didn't I include every single piece of information like the movements of the ants on the floor like doesn't like surely an interpretation I mean is it isn't as fundamental as just like an interpretation of like something anything at all um I guess the problem is that how do we factor in like would that make a tree art just by virtue of it existing and me noticing it I mean so the the purpose of the definition isn't necessarily to try and we might have slightly different goals my purpose in this definition is to give direction to artists and art analysis so it's like well what would separate great films from good films from bad films from terrible films right it's like well you know it's what is trying to be communicated in the methods of communication and like the uh how successful it was right it gives you direction there if you're sitting down to write a story um I can at least say from my perspective my definition gives me an incredible amount of direction right it's like well what am I doing well first of all I need to be intentionally communicating like I don't want to rely on just randomly scraping the wall with a paintbrush and you know something falling out it's like I you know I want to be doing something purposeful and beyond that I want to be trying to communicate something that isn't straightforward something that would require art right something that you would need art to express not like a grocery list right more like a story that you know evokes emotions and and and themes and all sorts of things in the audience's mind and suspense and all these other things right so the definition gives direction both for analysis and for actually creating art I mean that's that's what the purpose is for me and it's like you can sort of poke at the edges of it and try and find oh well maybe there's some things that don't fall under I mean I personally don't agree right like I I think maybe the act of displaying an accidental paint scraping could be artistic but just random I don't I don't think like scraping paint off a wall is art I don't think just a tree is art right and it is true that if you I mean there's examples of people who create art in isolation for only themselves I'm much more willing to follow those first two than I am you're taking a picture of a tree you're as far as you're concerned it's like meh it's no different than me saying it like I find that strange well I mean okay you can say that it's shitty art I guess I mean like yeah because there is there is there is there is something there right but there's just by your own definition right you would have taken that picture you would have moved into a position you would have decided what stays in the frame and what doesn't yeah that's part of the craft I think I think uh I guess to to clarify like I'm not I think I think this particular conversation right now I'm not trying to figure out like what makes for good or bad I guess I'm trying to figure out what the fundamental is because when it comes to the craft of storytelling for instance like I don't think that you can just like pound the keyboard and just have a bunch of like letters on the page it's like this is writing this is a story like it's you know like when we think about storytelling it's like we try to go more fundamental right a sequence of events accounted for you know there is perspective there are characters and theme and world I guess and so like in that sense I would agree with the idea that like some kind of working definition or adding things on to try and help you guide you in a direction is valuable like right now I'm trying to figure out if a tree is arts like that's actually what I'm trying to figure out right now I'll try and keep an eye out for hyper relevant super chats but someone's just asked like what about when animals commit to making images and especially ones that don't even understand what they're doing necessarily like when an orangutan gets handed a stick and a knife and he starts carving it into like a little like a different looking stick right surely well I mean the make elaborate displays to attract a mate with their nests but it's entirely for like some practical utility yeah I would actually thinking how much do they want to fuck well yeah I would actually designing a car for efficiency but then it's like well yeah but it's also incredible to look at what if I would tend to become an artist just to fuck right like is that any more valuable yeah don't don't denigrate my screenplays but no like I would actually tend towards maybe it is right I mean like we can't fully understand the cognitive experience of an animal right I have a dog I'm around him all the time I don't I don't know or want to know what's going on in that dude's head but I mean it's it's completely it's completely possible that I mean there is something there right I mean it could be that you know an elephant scribbling paint on a thing um it means more to them than just a random thing that they did right well I mean we can pretty clearly say that it does I guess that's the thing though we can go basic to the like an ant like is an ant colony uh is that art would you count an ant as an agent would you say that this is this this act warrants us saying that this is a an expression of any part of their being in any way I don't know that I would consider an ant an agent and I don't know that there is an there there's any function of the ant colony aside from a pragmatic purpose would you consider a dog an agent sure well why a dog and not an ant I mean I'm also fine with yeah I'm also fine with saying that a dog is much more likely to be an agent than an ant is um I guess this depends at this point like how pedantic we want to get because you could say that like was it called like uh like I don't know like plankton or cyano plankton or whatever it's called like or just bacteria these are things that are alive in the same way that we're alive I guess just is it like consciousness is is that what we're going for I think it's more than just consciousness at that point we're going to have to start rolling back we've gone way too far I think we can I think we can all agree though yeah I think we can all agree though that like a human being is definitely an agent and a a single cell bacteria is not an agent yeah and there's a whole there's a whole world in there where you could spend all your life and never get the answers so yeah and I'm fine with I'm comfortable just saying people yes dog maybe ant no I'm saying ant no yeah I'm fairly comfortable saying ant no but I do think that there was a point of complexity where a sufficiently advanced brain becomes an agent but that's obviously getting into a different but I mean again if we talked about how like a town can have a character can an ant colony the combined efforts of thousands of of individuals certainly when David Attenborough if I can write something commentates exactly that's David but is that David Attenborough's character or is that no I'm talking about if you'll be like their desperation to reach the pond in time they'll have to defend their queen you know just stuff like that yeah well I would say that that is his storytelling you know I mean he's definitely a storyteller he's giving him the even David Attenborough David Attenborough could film someone taking a shit and then playing the binding of Isaac and make it fucking compelling so absolutely basically anything right yeah I would say the difference between like a town having character and us as characters is it's almost like the it's an agreed upon general attribute that a thing has instead of a thing itself because of what it does I mean could just add about an ant colony generally agreed upon attributes of like the ant well we could in the sense of that this ant colony has a certain character to it right is different than the ant colony is a character because it's it's not even alive it isn't an agent however based off of generally agreed upon aspects and attributes of that ant colony's construction generally it is agreed upon that it has a certain like I said attributes that we could say which which we call something having character we use that word to describe generally agreed upon attributes yeah but those things are commented on by outside right and yeah like it has to be because because you could say the same thing about like a galaxy right it's like billions and billions and billions of individual like pieces like stars planets nebulae um like all sorts and then you could boil it down even more right so like atoms and and different um different uh elements and stuff but like ultimately like what gives that meaning is again like a human perspective the milky way galaxy exists because we have to find a galaxy is this but like that's because of us otherwise it would just exist as this thing it doesn't really have a story without us to put in meaning into it so you could say the same thing about I guess like the hypothetical story of the ant colony that has no characters other than the ants in the colony itself or even not describing the ants but just the colony but it's like the pov of the narrator and then the pov of you is like what gives it form which brings us neatly back to characters I was actually gonna say we're still on point technically yeah um this is all been about what even it makes for a character um that to then lead into what I do which I don't know if everyone's happy we could then move into the next contestant no wait wait wait um this makes me think of that scene in American beauty where the bag's blown around in the wind and then the the guy films it on tape and shows the girl and it has that music playing over top it um but like I wonder like if was it art before it was put on film is like is the medium a necessary component of it or did that guy find art in that bag blowing around just in the fact that it was there and it looked so elegant to him I think yes that's a good point and the reason that I would say yes is because if art is an an expression you know if you if this is an agent expressing some aspect of their being then it necessarily requires a medium well what happens if I like if I if I'm making a film and then I commission an artist to do like a poster that's going to be in my film and then the poster ends up in the film and it's like a really important part of the film did it became art as soon as it became the poster and then it became a different type of art when it became contextualized within the film yeah I would say so yeah because you could have that poster and that poster yeah yeah that it could be the poster could be on the wall you could take a picture of a poster and get an extra layer of an image you could film it as you threw it through the air you could fold it up into a cool hat that you wear at parties and it that same physical high rags give it to me um I am not a purveyor of hats I cannot help you in this endeavor my hats are made only for myself someone in chat has said something that has made me think they said what about stage plays now what what what happens when we talk about art that is like non-permanence like like a stage play that is performed in front of no cameras and then after it happens the script gets burned all the people all mediums are non-permanent oh yeah right I guess if we go big enough I mean usually screenplays I think it's fair to draw a distinction so like performative like something that's performative well maybe yeah I'm assuming we all agree like the act of acting is a form of art right it's an expression yes you are you are expressing yourself through the medium of your body's locomotion and that is that art it's like yeah I you know we could ask a lot of questions about where we draw lines on all of that for definitions as well I just don't if you want to go down that road scale good on sexing art no that is a war crime however to be clear it isn't a war crime in the first Wonder Woman because it's not a war crime the first time um so I I'm I'm not sure um like I find all the takes here really interesting but I'm not sure I agree with the consensus here I I I'm not which one really well I'm not I don't yeah is there a consensus I don't everyone disagreed with me well I I see some overlap here between all of you where you like you think art needs either an artist or a medium or both and I don't really think it needs either necessarily I mean it can and a lot of it does obviously but I think people can find art in anything isn't then isn't then the I think that is well so the problem with that as it becomes a word that's meaningless is art is everything yeah I think that might be a different I think you might be using the word art but referring to a different concept that almost sounds like people can people can find people can find meaning in anything but yeah if art is just anything then I mean like technically speaking it has no meaning right because of the signified is everything so the fire doesn't have a purpose the way I think of art is if it moves somebody that's my my fundamental definition of something like we were talking about trees for instance like if like you're saying just looking at a picture of a tree's art but just looking at a tree is an art but I can personally can look at a tree and find art in uh like say for instance it's like bursting out of like the cement or something or there's some kind of like for sure mechanical thing that nature is kind of forging its way out through and you can take that as a statement on the resilience and what brute force of yeah I think I think it's a beautiful rotation wrong but you think happening itself yeah could you say your explanation of that is the art yeah okay because it sounds like you're you've replaced meaning with art like you wherever you find meaning you're looking at art automatically right like whatever whatever you can impart because yeah I think that's an interesting one right is like the story that you've told about the tree like that which is you the agent and the medium of your language you you pulled it from something that you didn't create but like you created the interpretation of it and like by virtue of creating that interpretation that is that has like become the art yeah because I don't think any of us here well maybe other than duma but I don't think any of us here are too definitive on the definition of art as you can see we're all still kind of figuring out the sounds and I'm pretty sure yeah I'm pretty I'm pretty set on the broad concept of um agent and expression as the two necessary components of course that subject to change but I'm pretty I'm pretty solid with that one well I'm not sure but I'm also not bothered by that I like the idea that I keep thinking about it every once in a while it's not really changing much of anything about my day to day you know not having a definitive definition of art because often you don't get challenged to this level right like it's rare that you're gonna find something that's always like oh this painting of a dod has been sold for billions of dollars it's like hard what why like the toilet you guys can clip that moller calls himself a film critic but he doesn't even know what art is true I think if you ask 20 film critics what art was you might get 10 well look at what's happened today I get 20 different answers well it's because art is just one of those of itself it's so broad and everyone thinks of it in the wrong way so you don't have to explain yourself because everybody no no one criticizes or pokes apart someone else's definition when everyone works off of this broad ambiguous kind of concept that in each one of their individual minds is overlapping enough with everybody else's broad and ambiguous definition that it doesn't matter it's a it's a great way to start an argument is to define something no it isn't yeah we may not we may not all be able to like agree on what art is but we can't all agree but I we can't agree that right spot so it makes it better true I would say though that I don't think art requires an observer yeah I don't know I don't know I don't agree with that but this is a long conversation to me to me that's the key honestly is somebody observing it moved by it yeah well I feel like it's just the thing of if we all cease to exist is there art anymore I don't know I don't know if like I would say yes because it adheres to the fact that there was an artist who express themselves in a medium and that makes it art and whether or not anyone knows about it whether or not minds even exist to perceive it I I still don't think that takes away from what it is well so yeah because the thing that's making me wonder is like I don't know like a human makes a painting and then he just disappears immediately and then like a billion years later another agent comes to be and then finds the painting and is able to interpret it it's like so was it art and then it wasn't art and then it became art again as soon as he existed like this yeah when the last mind in the cosmos dies is it did all art suddenly disappear yeah I don't know I don't know if you're um talking in terms of just a practical sense of like okay is it art if they're always there to observe it at that point it doesn't fucking matter what it is no one's there yeah it's a bit like the tree falls in the woods kind of thing yeah exactly well I would say that the tree falls in the woods if that doesn't fucking matter no one's there yeah that's not addressing the question Jay yeah and it does make a sound obviously but um I what that question is really asking you is defined sound pretty much yeah we have one of those yeah sound exists independent of minds and observers so we'd know that the tree would make a sound I suppose well you're asking someone if they think that the word sound to them means the perception of sound in the human brain or the vibration of whatever medium it's carrying through well yeah it is hearing but I mean the question the answer this question might change depending on um languages and dialects that you're asking it in I mean I'm I'm sure yes if the meanings of all the words we use change then yes the sentence would not mean the same shut the fuck up rags I do agree Jay you will have no hats from me wow no I'm going to steal his hat he's a beanie a beanie's a hat I do like beanies is is metal is your headset a hat how big does a headset have to get until it's a hat how much of the head does it have to cover three seventy three percent all right so metal what's the most important part of the story no way yeah metal he was gonna say something I was just gonna say it's a tie a ball on it I still think that character is the most important part of the story okay now dooma can I ask metal the question yeah dooma there's no power here I will not answer that question well what's the most important part of the story uh I think for me since we've watched so many bad stuff these past couple of years uh it is takes me back takes me back to well to speaking of tomorrow boba fat episode three reaction coming out oh coming out okay I have to watch another bad thing yeah I heard that's terrible it's so bad it is it's the work so awful I don't mean to go ahead well I'm used to being fucking interrupted all the time show up now no it's pretty much consistency and that counts for storytelling and characters together it goes from from all this all the shitty shit I've seen so I'm gonna say that properly so all the shitty shit yeah all shitty shit yeah so if we have a character it's can do thing a and then all of a sudden it can do the character can do thing b and everyone is sitting there like wait why can you do that like why is that a thing let's talk it's take no way home for example when strange suddenly has a spell to make people forget things it's like oh that's like super useful in everything that's happened before I guess that's on the greater spectrum though because we have like a whole universe that already happened but also people can just fight all of a sudden like in bad woman when all of a sudden whichever bad woman it is like oh you you can fight all these people now and you also know how to do all these things and you're also allowed to do all these things makes like for a really frustrating experience and it's just interesting to think about because we have so many things now that don't make sense at all continuity wise for characters and storytelling but I feel like a lot of people don't care about that at all yeah I feel like they don't either yeah I think we're in an unprecedented era for fucking consistency being thrown out the window out of curiosity though I'm assuming you'd want to make caveats like there are times where an inconsistency can be used to give us information such as if Dr. Strange did turn out to be Mephisto we could then praise the writing because we could be like there was plenty of clues that he was out of character because it's not what he would do that sort of thing I think we mentioned that a bunch of times and in the e-fab over it right about it so like oh if he would have been an evil man that would have make sense would have made sense there he would go that way to use that and fuck up the universes I guess or dimensions or whatever it was but in that case we just we just had Strange doing a really stupid fucking thing and destroying the the established character that we have if um in Dr. Strange three not even two they actually did establish retroactively that he was Mephisto in No Way Home the whole time does that then fix No Way Home or does it fix the wider story but No Way Home still suffers as an individual story because it didn't give you that context that's interesting question yeah I I think that's the judgment of how much net meta knowledge is allowed to factor in really isn't it um because at that point I would go down the range being Mephisto becomes Mephisto knowledge so a lot of us you can we talk about objectivity a lot it's possible to be objective and be incorrect right while still working with all of the information that you have at your hands and I think this is probably uh in a similar kind of place where if you're working off of all of the information that you could possibly have at any given time and ensuring that all of your biases have been removed sufficiently um you can still say with objective commentary that is correct that they're I guess correctly objective instead of objective that is correct commentary that like Dr. Strange obviously this doesn't work here and then it's not that it retroactively became a different way so much as it is retroactively we discovered information that showed we were not correct in our conclusion but that's why conclusions are always tentative but I guess like in the in the case of Strange if we go with what Marla said I think it's still wouldn't make sense in that context because why would he have stopped the spell at the end then oh obviously I'm assuming this is an abstract thing like we're pretending hypothetically it does fit like all of it fits I just thought about that example you just needed to cause some universe flumping and not all of it like we get all the explanation we need to make it all work I mean I guess it's fine I guess would be awkward for the time I don't I don't know how I would see that I would probably need to think more about it but if it all makes sense if it all makes sense at the end I guess that would be fine so I was just gonna um actually it sounds like you're on that topic so continue so the way I would probably try and do it is the same conclusion I reached with I was doing Dark Souls 2 people were like if all of these things you say about Scarlet of the first sin as a critique of Dark Souls 2 aren't applicable to Dark Souls 2 the base version then like how do you reconcile that you're saying like this doesn't work this doesn't work and then I just decided okay fine I'm talking about Scarlet of the first sin that's specifically what I'm talking about and if you you know are wondering what my opinions are on the base game it's just like I don't know if they're applicable or not that's not the version I'm playing in the same vein I think that being critical of no way home as an individual piece remains but the MCU is a story that's evolving all the time and I think you could even in a valid sense and this applies to everyone's reviews of everything basically like critiquing snook and how he fits into the story in TFA and then someone's like you have a TLJ makes it all make sense and then you watch that and you're like oh yeah it does actually like well are your criticisms of TFA still valid and so I think it depends on how many of like the the payoffs dependent on your understanding at the time um and I so I would still say like no way home needed to give us more context to have been able to understand that I think it's still a flaw from no way home as it stands on its own that we have to simply believe that the Doctor Strange is fucking moron but in the wider context of the MCU perhaps I would argue once that third Doctor Strange comes out that um there was ways they made it work and that you have to have some patience with this wide story that you compactly consider all at the same time which is getting more and more complicated with the TV shows and I'm not sure how much um you can push that before it becomes ridiculous as an idea a lot of this comes down to your how fervently you adhere to the concept of conclusivity um which shouldn't be you know some things can be more dare I say more conclusive than others uh based on the information that you have but if everything's tentative and you're working with the best that you've got then it makes it a lot easier to make statements based on the information that you have what happens if we take a book that was complete and then we later chop it in half uh two separate things and we've burned all of the copies of the original book how do we draw the line in terms of like if the book is utterly incomprehensible in its first half but the second half reconciles everything sorry so we have one book that's chopped in half it is one book and we cut it in half as two books and all copies of the first book uh as as a soul book are destroyed what are you asking about the first just do we know it was a one book before do we know the story isn't over there's a difference between being incomprehensible being incomplete right yeah I mean like we have examples of this in history right you'll you find a document but you only find part of it I mean you're just being incomplete historical artifact I would think well I guess what I'm saying is people think dude yeah the first half is incomprehensible I guess we're talking about the idea of you know you can rely on stuff that comes after to reconcile issues and stuff like that let's say that we have a book that was written as one complete book at 600 pages we chop it into two 300 page books uh part one is incomprehensible part two explains everything and it's perfect and all copies of the first book are destroyed they cease to exist and nobody nobody has access to them anymore um how to like does that mean that the first book is terrible and the second book is fantastic and fixes everything or how do we draw the line I mean like I suppose if if you erased information from the cosmos then I don't know what grounds you could have to say that it would not be terrible and like in general I think it's how consistently it tends to be thought the fact is in you know like you have situations like r plus l equals j where it started being hinted at like 20 years ago or whatever it didn't really get confirmed until like three years ago right yeah but the reveal is completely consistent with the information that we had whereas if you have like a more of a star war situation it seems like things if the things that are being established in the later work are inconsistent with what was established in the earlier work then I think you've got a problem and I do think we should draw a difference between like having mystery boxes in their most positive and pure form of like happy thumbs up and as a reveal like oh cool versus you know wait how did they do all of that it's like well maybe you'll find out some of the time you know like what no I mean how did they all survive that encounter it's like maybe you'll find out in episode three like no that yeah if you essentially treat every issue in a story as it's unfalsifiably bad because of a potential explanation that's just not helpful yeah it turns out if every character how did this character do that well they could secretly be some mega super mutant from the future with magic powers it's the same thing as that yeah actually notice people doing that a lot it gets really frustrating that's the extension you can take it to the means basically like the sequel trilogy we can still contextualize that to make all of it make sense without yes and then ray woke up and it was all a dream that's the easiest way yeah to be like see like now none of it doesn't make sense and you're like right the correct one move what I try to do with film analysis is to look at like what is the most logical thing to happen given the information that we have not is it conceivable that something could happen given the information we have because that gives you a lot of room to justify like basically anything I basically gives you infinite room really I can see them a lot I think it can be complicated right it's like when we talk about for instance contrivance like we I think we would all agree that a contrivance is not as significant as a whole like a whole is irreconcilable yes this passion isn't here yeah yeah whatever that's like definition i'm true right yeah and the contrivance is like a stretch right so it's like I can believe that that's possible unlikely impossible yeah it is and then we ask for it's an extreme one I guess that's the thing right when we talk about degrees right stories will have contrivance well actually I don't want to say that most stories are going to end up with some level of contrivance because it's like difficult to write a story to get it to the places that you want like that's the challenge of storytelling I'm like you will get potentially yeah it's always on a it's always like on a spectrum right it's a right though um I think your goal as a writer is to just create the most logical outcome of pieces that you set up and you don't have any particular like individual payoffs that you're going you're aiming towards then I don't think that you're going to have any contrivances at all really uh I guess um when we think about it it's it's the idea of like how much can you get away with in terms of contrivance and how do we draw that line yeah I was just going to say that like my um my first screenplay is a good example because it's completely consistent and there's no plot contrivances and it's completely realistic it's also boring right it's like trying to do something interesting is yeah trying to do something interesting is where you run into problems we've talked about the uh the accountants story of the accountant who does the books and it's all yeah we talk about variables which is often why we reward stories like you know which makes more sense lord of the rings or maybe office space and it's like well probably office space I guess but I don't know if that's that fair because lord of the rings is dealing with an insane level of variables to maintain and timeline yeah all the species and when you're not relying on the real world as a point of like a story that like Breaking Bad is not going to have as many variables as the book of Boba Fett however you know the book of Boba Fett is pretty worthless in terms of its plot and character so maybe I need a better example like I mean it's pretty good art direction though well I guess uh yeah I well I don't know about that I don't know I don't think I'd agree with those nifty bikes that's why I said it yeah I was gonna say he's aware I guess we use to my only my only knowledge of this is you guys shitting on it I haven't actually well I mean I I guess here's a proper relevant one right it's like 12 angry men is a really great film that has very very very low variables we've got an incredibly limited setting it is a real world like contemporary setting with normal people uh and a pretty pretty like normal it's you know like it's it's all grounded versus if you take something like Blade Runner where it's like so the story itself is like fairly grounded but we are in a science fiction setting we've got like more variables at play in terms of like replicants and space travel technology and things like that and it's like well how impressive is it when Blade Runner achieves what it does with all of the complex things that get thrown in that will make it just naturally harder for any writer to make it work because you'll create you're inventing so many new things versus a story that relies entirely on things that exist in the real world real world systems of government apparatus technology you know I mean the fact that before sunrise is consistent means next to nothing I mean it's two people literally walking around a city with a handy cam having one conversation I mean hard for it not to be consistent I mean I wouldn't go that far it depends on what I'm saying yeah like it yeah I wouldn't take away from the fact that the variables alone in character but the way to look at it I guess is like if Bill and Bob are both juggling Bill dropped one ball while Bob dropped five it's like oh man Bill's better than it's like Bill was only juggling two Bob was juggling ten thousand it's like oh yeah exactly in that case Bill has done shit like he couldn't juggle two uh which is we come across that quite a bit where we're like when the when the when a story deals with very few variables but can't even control them it's like oh good job as opposed to yeah like the more characters you throw in the more world building additional world building science fictional fantasy or whatever that you throw in that's got to be worth something in terms of if you can nail it it's like wow good job man like that was actually really hard you made it very hard for yourself and you did a great job versus you had no excuse I feel that way about Boba Fett I know that Boba Fett is a sci-fi fantasy but at the same time it feels like the variables are very easy to control I think the variables are easy to control because of the stakes of the story and also that it's in a universe where a lot has already been laid out for you you just gotta follow the rules that have already been made for you yeah because you want to be careful what you give the audience as well because it's going back to Boba because it's the most recent example as well just I don't give a shit how he got a stupid fucking stick like wow wow to me so we need an origin story for Boba's stick yeah I'd rather get an origin story for Plank yeah exactly but if you convey info or story or well building that in the grand scheme doesn't matter just because so we have in that case a reason why he has the stick even though that could be easily inferred in between what happened he found a stick he found a stick yeah or he just took it from one of the Tuscan raiders he found in the desert because he was in there it's yeah exactly that's you need to be careful don't don't do too much don't be I guess too consistent like it's okay there's things in there you can infer I guess too good I put it in well I think it's too consistent that's probably this is over explanation at that point right I think this is a big challenge that arrived it's like it's kind of like the challenge of trying to create stories is you want to make sure that it all follows and makes sense but like probably some point that you want to make and it might be hard to like make that and that's like the challenge of storytelling I guess is to try and make the point that you want to make with the story the arts in the sense or like the meaning of the art against all of the the ways that we get there the ways that this communicated that you know the the building blocks basically which means John is next oh my god what is the most important element of storytelling why is it merchandising chimps sidekick yes preferably a cop resurrected from the dead and is somebody's ex-partner I like it and he has a cat phrase yes attitude catch phrase ideally incorporating the word banana each time wow these beat shifter enough to drive me bananas Mahoney and then he actually starts with bananas and screeching at the top of his legs punching Mahoney stop it so I'm about to say the meme word are you ready themes and I was hoping someone would say it I'm hard yeah so when you said character fringy I don't think that's really far off from theme because I consider characters as vehicles for themes and I don't think a theme always has to be crystal clear but I think there's something needs to be there and all the best movies like all the movies that are really resonated with me have they usually have a theme that's quite clear and you know respectable I was just watching Ratatouille the other day and I fucking love that movie it's and its theme is crystal clear I mean they laid out in the first scene talent can come from anywhere right yeah well there's a number like a film can have multiple themes right but it's typically there's one at the top and then you have another bunch of them that kind of branch off of that and all the plot beats kind of explore the nuances of those themes and in the case of Ratatouille it's not only is it a high concept you know a rat the last thing you'd want in a kitchen becomes the finest chef in Paris like you can immediately you hear that logline and you're like okay cool I'm on board I get it uh but beyond that the theme is like talent can come from anywhere not and they explain this in the movie as well that can be talented yeah right yeah the critic ego has the speech at the end he writes his review of Gusto's restaurant yeah he says not everyone wants and dies not everyone can be a great artist but a great artist can come from anywhere like as long as if you want to do something and you put your mind to it and you're willing to learn you can be great no matter where you from who you are and uh that always stuck with me like that's one of the best I mean there's a lot of things I like about that movie but the fact that it's the story that it's telling is so clear I know what it's about and I leave the theater going I was actually about something and I can really get on board with that message you know we're talking about uh story earlier being a series of events I agree that that's an essential component of it but to me the other essence essential component is a meaningful series of events what is what does the string of events mean because other without anything holding it together it's just a bunch of stuff happening you know and a bunch of stuff can happen where it's like exploding cars and tits and a sex scene and a montage and I'm just like okay like that was I guess enjoyable on some kind of popcorn brain dead level but I'm I'm not really leaving the theater with any kind of um I mean it's a theme or a movie doesn't have to be like profound and life-changing or anything or have a you disqualify it as a story if you don't find meaning in it um hmm I think so yeah okay if it's just a bunch of stuff happening I wouldn't say that's a story because like if I were in the same situation I should be like it's a story but I don't care about it I just don't find it very valuable yeah it's a story that just doesn't really have a meaningful theme to a purpose or a message I guess that um I agree that the theme is basically the point of like why we tell stories is the lessons and values that we can pull from narrative and like characters is like the empathy vehicle that helps it easy like become more like comprehensible and easy for us to understand but I would say that there are absolutely like stories that I guess the problem is I feel like you could put like you you could put a theme onto any story and then the conversation would just be how well executed is the theme right like the theme of transformers is I don't know um be nice to your car because if you don't it might come out and machine was worked together to do yeah well I could say that and it's like I guess if I had I could work really hard to try and pull that theme out but it's it's bullshit right as opposed to like the themes of um the the themes of ratatouille where it's like it's pretty clear that this is the point because there's so much in the story that supports that theme and I guess that's where the conversation becomes how well have you executed your theme because I do think that there are degrees to which themes are well executed and poorly executed yeah right no totally totally fair point I I agree with that like uh this reminds me I talked about this on the podcast before but I had a friend uh or a fan of mine email me asking for story advice we've got fans no need he wanted to he wanted to write a story that didn't have a theme deliberately or uh I think that's what he said yeah and he he was asking me like how would you do that and I'm just like well I wouldn't do that so I'm not really the guy to ask for advice on that kind of approach to me that's kind of essential to it but uh you're right in that if I were to just write a bunch of stuff happening and deliberately try and not put a theme in there I think there's going to be a there's going to be a message embedded in that no matter what even if I should pull from it absolutely I think yeah that's the second character I was going to bring up was the how do you stop there's always going to be someone who can find something in whatever story even if it's one you've deemed like meaningless because I'm almost thinking like what Fringy just said that someone can pull something from it I'm almost feeling like the phrase should be some like a theme that someone can put into it right well I guess the thing is is that when you think about writing a story a lot of the time at least in my experience there is like intentionality of like trying to have a point I guess a lot of the time like usually like whenever I think about a story I want to tell there's usually like a point of some kind not necessarily a point of like this is correct but like wouldn't it be interesting to think about this concept like something to do without I don't know fear or or heroism or like these are and I feel like it traces back to like the epic of Gilgamesh is one of the earliest stories ever told the theme is like to like death is inevitable right and that's like one of the themes of that story is like one of the first stories we told it seems to just be like a really important part of why we tell stories is some sort of message it's it's the whole idea of like parables and fables like asops fables and things like that is some sort of message about that you can apply to your life that's like what we're there for well as and as much as I appreciate the fuck out of messaging and themes and stuff is it not valuable in and of itself to be like you know what I'd like to just see wills and vampires fight each other in a story with some characters I don't need a I don't need to draw meaning out of it beyond that totally true I love movies that are totally absolutely shallow and are just a string of action sequences I would still say that all my favorite ones have some message that I consider respectable you know where it's like it's some it's some archetype that has like recurred over and over that you can apply to your own life in some way like the highest pedigree it can reach without a theme do you think without a theme uh parade uh does have a theme yeah I don't think it's without theme I'm not quite sure what it is I need to what I envision as a problem here is that you might cite an example and then someone they might be in chat will be like what do you mean there's a theme in that this thing yeah didn't you notice am I weird I guess uh because yeah because like the Red Redemption is a movie that pretty much everybody watches for the really awesome action scenes but I'm pretty sure that like you could pull a theme from that film because it does have a narrative it has characters and it has a plot um and it has stuff to do with like what's that what did chat said I totally disagree with all the action devoid of story is a disgusting waste of time this guy has fun at parties I mean I'm assuming I'm not alone in having watched action scenes devoid of context because they're awesome I'm assuming you guys right like if you watch like dragon balls and compilations hell yeah they're really cool I like to enjoy my toxic masculine uh entertainment I guess that's the thing is like if you look into the story that doesn't have much of a theme but it's incredibly incredibly incredibly impressive incredibly impressive yes incredibly impressive on a technical level like it's got incredible fight scenes amazing visual effects great cinematography awesome music like everything is working but it is just like a fight scene I feel like that's got to be worth a hell of a lot in terms of just the craft of you know because I yeah I guess in filmmaking filmmaking is like I guess storytelling is the umbrella term but there's also like more to craft than that in the same way that like with art there's like paint strokes and brushes and and like uh color you know how color plays into it like the technical aspects of the crafts like for instance really great pros describing nothing could be that could be really interesting in terms of like theme was like that it doesn't really have a theme at all but it's just super impressive uh in terms of the the technical crafts yeah that's gonna be awesome the the questions today though revolve around like what is the best of a number of elements of storytelling the best what the best story the best character I would say when we're talking about the best stories the cream of the crop are the ones that have are tied together by themes you know every scene you you you see it like relates to something unifying and it's everything is driving towards one central thing or like one main thing and a bunch of sub themes as well what would you I don't know is like a film that you really really like and value that you don't particularly care about the theme to be fair all he has to do is cite one that he enjoys but not for it doesn't have to not have a theme just one that he doesn't enjoy for its themes it wasn't that I think it was the themes being the most important aspect of what makes like a story the greatest you know like if you had especially if themes are more just emergent from characters and setting instead of more intentionally baked into the material um because I wonder does a does a story like if we take the Lord of the Rings right and if we take all that that encompasses what the character is behaving and their dialogue and the plot carrying out as it does um is that story only as good as it is because of the themes that are present in it or if if all of those themes were more like again passively emergent would that make the story worse well I mean I would I would say that like Lord of the Rings the themes are not passively emergent like it's it's pretty clear what the theme of the Lord of the Rings is it's like okay so someone didn't see them well then but they loved it I guess that's an interesting thing to think about it is it like did they actually appreciate it but they can't put their finger on it or do they are they like holy they well I well they could just talk about the characters the dialogue yeah just purely pure characters this character does this and therefore he does that and so he says these things and that's consistent with I always say and he learned from this and so he did that they did that about the entirety of the Lord of the Rings but they're they just had they just didn't see the themes they just didn't notice them it just didn't occur to them that there were themes in it and then you mention it and they're like oh yeah I guess if you want to yeah I guess there was yeah if they're talking about the things that they like and are great about the characters could you make the argument that like just by virtue of doing that that they're going to talk about themes somehow like if they talk about how much they love the relationship between Frodo and Sam in terms of like their friendship they're just like virtue of talking about that they've kind of talked about theme so so in that I said well the one ring is a representation of the theme lmao rags is wrong on this one what what am I wrong about I'm asking a question about uh I'm describing a hypothetical individual well yeah I think and we're getting closer and closer to the point because if we can't separate the meaning you derive out of a character's story from theme then at that point uh yeah I guess everyone's appreciating theme no matter what in some sense yeah but to answer the question about specifically the friendship between Sam and Frodo for instance is the friendship that they have and are displayed to have different from the theme of friendship I guess that's the thing right it because it because I think you can tie throughout that whole film right that it's basically friendship good is like the theme of lord of the rings that like working together good because I think because when I think about these two characters my mind in no way goes to friendship as a theme I am completely honed in and focused and notice these are two characters who are very good friends based on all the things they do and say and I like that I'm compelled by it that's right um I think the themes go in subconsciously though you know like if you're not appreciating if you're if you're not if you don't acknowledge them on the surface and you don't leave the theater knowing what the themes are if they're there I think they go in well into your brain the only way we can figure that out then at that point is like rags is telling me how much he enjoyed Frodo and Sam he assesses them as characters perfectly their journeys and what they mean to each other and then I go well sounds like you loved as well this the the idea of fellowship and how we can come together to beat any foe sort of thing I could let's pretend hypothetically rags was like uh oh I like so yeah the theme doesn't have to be anything complex or profound you know well I'm just asking that word not even a phrase I'm suggesting that rags in the hypothetical does not give a fuck about the theme whatsoever but he's very definitive on what he's enjoying about the content as a story well I often think of themes as like statements or yeah maybe to find some sometimes defined theme I guess I don't know if theme and meaning are exactly interchangeable maybe that's the dictionary yeah you can go to it you can go I'll let you phone a friend if you like but as someone yeah as someone who's because I mean a theme is the thing that you think is most important I I feel you should have some kind of a definition for it theme so the definition of theme according to Merriam-Webster is a subject or topic of discourse or of artistic representation b a specific and distinctive quality characteristic or concern two a melodic subject of a musical compositional movement three are written exercise so I guess it would be definition one a a subject or topic of discourse or of artistic representation yeah one for a unifying idea that's the one I'm inclined to I feel like just something that ties everything together and like I'm saying it doesn't have to be anything big or profound or life-changing or new like often they're not new they're historically recurring over and over again you know right I think do you describe it as oftentimes the point which I I would agree that's what I generally would say is the theme is the point of the story it's like if we have a story that has characters plot and world building like the actual stuff that's in there the theme is like the value that you pull from it in terms of um like a point or a lesson or a virtue um I feel like that's the best I could do with the definition for theme anything else feels like it might leave stuff out um and I mean you think because a lot of the time themes of stories are like be brave or be kind to people or um failure is the best yeah no no no it's the greatest teacher failure is yeah it's a completely different thing watch the movie no I didn't watch it if not then I oh I envy you then I envy you how many times have we seen TLJ too many I think I've only seen it beginning to end it might be just the one time I certainly only watched it I've definitely seen it more than once for making those yeah I think that's what's wild I've only actually seen it beginning to end one time and it was at the theater the rest is a massive collection of clips and references and things of that nature I feel like it's always like a good example of and I mean there are a lot of examples of it right like that you can come into a story with the intention of conveying a certain theme but the story itself can betray that theme yeah absolutely you don't just earn it by default like the idea having the theme emerge in your head of like I want to tell this story with this point that's not that's not like anything necessarily you've got to put in the work to make that theme something of value work you I think so I think that um and I think that's what makes theme valuable and like stories where it's really great is man you work so hard to achieve this theme and make it cogent and there are so many references in the film that I can point to that are um that you know that we then support my interpretation of this theme like I appreciate all of the answers so far I don't disagree definitively with any of them and themes like the interesting thing about that one is that it's one of the most commonly like it's going to be between that and character for me to build a story up from the ground because it is the two that you need everything else to comport to as far as I'm concerned well a plot will like design itself once everybody is clear and the world is just just trying not to fucking contradict yourself okay well I think it's the standard thing right it's it's very rare that people say man what a great plot I love that plot that plot yeah so cool I love how that event happened and then that event happened but you do find other events the characters were pretty lame though these people people do say that on occasion like um I guess with twists and turns and but usually I feel like the social network is a very plot-driven film social network has strong characters though yeah those characters are awesome like that that would be what I'd be pointing to there I don't mean you think about it like Steve Jones which is also written by Aaron Sorkin it's like that's another one where it's like the plot is not that important at all it's like characters seeing these people interact with each other yeah it hardly exists you typically don't find people saying oh what a great plot but shitty characters but you will find everyone somewhere people saying what a great world like what an incredible world what what great character world seems to carry you quite far sometimes it can I think it can distract from not having any characters uh but I mean at that point it's the character of the world almost feels like or the potential of imagine this and yeah yeah this character in this world that'd be so cool like what if this character met the Balrog what if this character was present at this battle one of my uh favorite modern examples of theme holding a whole movie together is uh the second new spider man far from home um where you have this idea of controversial here I don't know what you guys maybe you guys hate it I don't know I really like we I think we all um this is one of the positive about it while having reservations about it yeah plot right let him say the thing and then we'll kill him yeah we're not gonna kill him this is fine we might I'm impressed I'm impressed that that film manages to have this kind of uh light fluffy comedic feel to it all but it's it's so tied together by its theme of truth it's just really simple that's about it and then a bunch of kind of sub themes and questions branching off this central idea of truth like the difference between truth in fact uh the difference between the truth and a lie uh the truth in service of a lie a lie in service of truth um what the greater good of of like a broad situation is like uh the uh that what you were when Fringing you're talking about characters being so important like I I totally agree characters are up there with theme for me because when you I think when you're brainstorming for stories I mean for me usually it's theme or character that comes first and with spider-man far from home if you tell a story about truth like that comes along with certain characters and Mysterio is such an obvious character a villain to go with when you're telling that kind of story but or maybe the character came first where it's like okay we want to do a movie about Mysterio what do we do with that it's like okay well with Mysterio comes these themes of what's real and what's not right because that's kind of the essence of that that villain yeah I uh it's I don't I guess I don't want to because I know one of the the future topics is going to be but one of my favorite characters and just like stories in general part of the reason why I like him so much is that he's so rich for like theme there's so much you can do in terms of theme exploration with that character they're just like man what a great template for like for telling stories about these particular topics I I definitely agree that like character and theme often go hand in hand because it's like the lesson that the hero learned is usually like the theme that you want the person to walk away with the challenges that they face and hide in but often not always necessarily sometimes it might be the villain right well it's just a great it's a great way to it's a great way to teach a lesson isn't it to show a character learning it through empathy right yeah that's like a strength of storytelling is it it leverages like human empathy to uh to get to a to a place um I think I'm not telling yet I think that movie does a really good job of exploring all the nuances of its theme through its plot without feeling too forced like for example like Peter gets photographed in that compromising with his pants down with that woman and it's a fact you know on in a photograph that that happened but the truth is not that he was making out with that girl or anything and the guy has that photo and he's using it against him to hook up with MJ and he's kind of like saying Peter is a bad person even though I I kind of think that that character knows that he caught him in a compromising position that wasn't quite what it seemed