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Jul. 7th, 2008 08:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethToday:
I also read a 10 part story. Well, it said 10 and meant 12. It was okay, well written, interesting, yet I feel no need to memory it. Partly because it's AU, and I seem to have gone off those when there's so much room in canon. Partly because I seem to have had enough of Save The Universe stories. I mean, it's not exactly hard or heroic, deciding to save the universe. You're standing in the universe. Even the evil can figure out that means the universe needs saving so you personally are saved. So, yeah, the actual saving bit can be a bit tricky, but if you know the alternative to you personally dying is you and everyone you ever met and everyone you might ever meet and the whole wide universe also dying, well, not so much difficult after all. So I get a bit bored. The stakes are too high, nobody could back out of them.
What interests me right at the moment are the stories where the many risk themselves to save the few. Like with fires or search and rescue stuff. One person in peril, many teams of people putting themselves in that same peril to get them out. Because that's not math that seems to make sense, but humans do it anyway. That's stakes. That's knowing that at any time you can say bugger this and go home, and it'll only be one person you never met who suffers for it. And deciding to go through hell to save them when you *do* have a choice? That's heroism.
There's a sort of sliding scale in between, but the more plain math says it makes sense the less thinking needs be involved. And saving what you're standing on isn't even a choice. I mean technically if the choice is between the whole city that you're in going radioactive or you personally glowing in the dark that's not much of a choice either. You don't lose anything by doing it that you wouldn't lose by not doing it. So it's all thrilling and with the big FX, but it's not half as interesting to me.
If it's a disaster movie and it's about ordinary people pulling together to survive some grand cataclysm then scale has a point. Nobody else there to save you, they're all busy. And plenty other people to save.
But most of the time the difference between hero and regular person lives in the moment they could have done what everyone else does and didn't. If what everyone else was doing is dying due to universe ending, that moment isn't so much there.
As a season ender the apocalypse works better. We've seen problems on lots of different scales leading up to that. And sometimes they've decided to risk the many for the few without actually asking the many, and then it goes horribly wrong, which is interesting. Solving that kind of apocalypse means pulling out hero moments after having done the selfish thing, so there's that whole redemption thing going on. But even as a season end, I much much much prefer the end of Parting of the Ways, where everyone *could* take TARDIS or Vortex Manipulator and get the hell out of the way, but they decide not to. Universe at risk... in a future they could happily avoid for a great many generations. That's interesting, huge risk but room to run. Choices. Or I like when Cardiff is at risk, because running away from Cardiff then becomes the solution everyone isn't taking. Because a burned out uninhabitable Cardiff would be bad, but you wouldn't even have to feel personally responsible for what was done to it, and you could totally survive elsewhere. So then it's a choice to stay and deal and have consequences.
But if it's the End of Everything Especially You And All Your Friends... running and hiding and leaving it to sort itself out aren't even options.
So from this you can see what interests me is not kabooms and heroic saves per se, it's the characters and the choices they make to lead them to get involved in that stuff.
People who don't have that focus probably like the End of Everything stories, because you know, really big kaboom.
I also read a 10 part story. Well, it said 10 and meant 12. It was okay, well written, interesting, yet I feel no need to memory it. Partly because it's AU, and I seem to have gone off those when there's so much room in canon. Partly because I seem to have had enough of Save The Universe stories. I mean, it's not exactly hard or heroic, deciding to save the universe. You're standing in the universe. Even the evil can figure out that means the universe needs saving so you personally are saved. So, yeah, the actual saving bit can be a bit tricky, but if you know the alternative to you personally dying is you and everyone you ever met and everyone you might ever meet and the whole wide universe also dying, well, not so much difficult after all. So I get a bit bored. The stakes are too high, nobody could back out of them.
What interests me right at the moment are the stories where the many risk themselves to save the few. Like with fires or search and rescue stuff. One person in peril, many teams of people putting themselves in that same peril to get them out. Because that's not math that seems to make sense, but humans do it anyway. That's stakes. That's knowing that at any time you can say bugger this and go home, and it'll only be one person you never met who suffers for it. And deciding to go through hell to save them when you *do* have a choice? That's heroism.
There's a sort of sliding scale in between, but the more plain math says it makes sense the less thinking needs be involved. And saving what you're standing on isn't even a choice. I mean technically if the choice is between the whole city that you're in going radioactive or you personally glowing in the dark that's not much of a choice either. You don't lose anything by doing it that you wouldn't lose by not doing it. So it's all thrilling and with the big FX, but it's not half as interesting to me.
If it's a disaster movie and it's about ordinary people pulling together to survive some grand cataclysm then scale has a point. Nobody else there to save you, they're all busy. And plenty other people to save.
But most of the time the difference between hero and regular person lives in the moment they could have done what everyone else does and didn't. If what everyone else was doing is dying due to universe ending, that moment isn't so much there.
As a season ender the apocalypse works better. We've seen problems on lots of different scales leading up to that. And sometimes they've decided to risk the many for the few without actually asking the many, and then it goes horribly wrong, which is interesting. Solving that kind of apocalypse means pulling out hero moments after having done the selfish thing, so there's that whole redemption thing going on. But even as a season end, I much much much prefer the end of Parting of the Ways, where everyone *could* take TARDIS or Vortex Manipulator and get the hell out of the way, but they decide not to. Universe at risk... in a future they could happily avoid for a great many generations. That's interesting, huge risk but room to run. Choices. Or I like when Cardiff is at risk, because running away from Cardiff then becomes the solution everyone isn't taking. Because a burned out uninhabitable Cardiff would be bad, but you wouldn't even have to feel personally responsible for what was done to it, and you could totally survive elsewhere. So then it's a choice to stay and deal and have consequences.
But if it's the End of Everything Especially You And All Your Friends... running and hiding and leaving it to sort itself out aren't even options.
So from this you can see what interests me is not kabooms and heroic saves per se, it's the characters and the choices they make to lead them to get involved in that stuff.
People who don't have that focus probably like the End of Everything stories, because you know, really big kaboom.