How to Choose Your Chosen One

Everyone wants to be special, at least a little bit. We want to believe that the world really does revolve around us and that we’re here for some great purpose. Luckily for us, we can project our desires onto fictional characters.  

Enter, Chosen Ones—characters that are literally chosen for greatness. They are typically the protagonist and have been selected to perform heroic deeds. However, there are many different ways to actually be Chosen, and the method often impacts what sort of character they become. So, which version should you choose? Let’s examine three of the most popular versions.  

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Chosen by Prophecy

In the Harry Potter series, prophecy states that “the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord” will be born under very specific circumstances, and he is seemingly the one that must kill Voldemort. Enter... well, Harry Potter. His birth matches the prophecy, and he survives an encounter with Voldemort despite being a baby.  

 That’s good enough for the wizarding world, and they promptly make Harry their official Chosen One. Despite only learning this himself at age 12, practically everyone puts all their hopes on him to defeat Voldemort once and for all. And he does, after a few years and with some help. But that is a lot of pressure to put on one person, especially a child. 

Prophecies are tricky business. They usually dictate that a special individual will rise up to do... something. Prophecies are extremely vague and can be interpreted in different ways. Neville Longbottom was just as likely to become the Chosen One, but it was Voldemort’s actions that solidified the true bearer of the prophecy. One thing is for sure: these prophecies will come true in some form, and our Chosen One is going to make it happen. 

In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, prophecies are conveniently stored in these ominous orbs.

The Literally Chosen

Unlike winning the magic lottery and being prophesied, these characters are individually selected to become Chosen Ones. It is not fate that chooses, but a specific character like a mentor figure. This chooser has free will and, more importantly, they are not infallible. The Chosen One has no destiny or prophecy to guarantee success—more often than not, they’re just a regular person that is granted power. 

 One of the most popular examples in recent years comes from My Hero Academia. Izuku “Deku” Midoriya is one of the unlucky few not to be blessed with superpowers, or ‘Quirks’. After proving his heroism despite this, he is gifted a Quirk by legendary hero All Might.  

 Because their power and status is gifted to them, these Chosen Ones are the most likely to try and return it. Deku tries to pass on his Quirk to others he believes are more worthy on several occasions. These Chosen Ones are different from other iterations due to the fact that they were personally chosen, not by destiny or reincarnation. Speaking of... 

Despite appearances, there two are some of the most powerful characters in My Hero Academia

The Chosen Incarnation

These Chosen Ones are less random than others. They are regularly reincarnated in the world to fulfill their duty—usually a general ‘fight evil’ gig—and will be replaced with a new iteration upon death.  

 In the Avatar universe, the Avatar is a figure that can control the four elements, and their duty is to keep peace between the nations and maintain balance. Aang, the Avatar in The Last Airbender, is a twelve-year-old boy that must end a hundred-year war. Maintaining peace of the entire world is a lot to put on one individual, no matter how strong they are.  

 Reincarnated Chosen Ones have even more stress than other Chosen Ones. Not only do they have a massive life-long duty, but they also have the extremely high expectations set by all of their previous incarnations to live up to.  No pressure.

The Four Seasons, by Scott Wade. A depiction of the Avatar cycle.

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By its nature the Chosen One trope heavily impacts both the plot it’s featured in, and the characterization of your Chosen One. Typically, your Chosen One will face serious self-doubt throughout their story—there’s about a 99% chance they will at some point shout “I never asked for this!” Likewise, the broad strokes of the story are generally the same. The story often starts with the Chosen One’s discovery and often ends when they’ve fulfilled their Chosen Duty. 

 But no two Chosen Ones are the same. Even in Avatar, Aang and the next iteration Korra have very little in common besides being the Avatar. Practically the only thing the three stories we discussed have in common is their protagonists being Chosen Ones.  

 Being Chosen should be an important part of your character and story, but it doesn’t have to be the only part. There are countless ways to create a Chosen One, so find what works best for you. You can choose your own destiny. 

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Cor O’Neill

Cor is a Professional Writing student at Algonquin and a horror enthusiast. If he’s not working at the library or attending class, he’s usually creating in some form. He writes in a wide variety of genres and his life dream is to meet Mothman.

SNK Bosses

Be aware that the following may contain spoilers for certain games. Read at your own risk.

We are all familiar with bosses in video games. They stand in the way of the character’s path and represent huge threats that need to be brought down. They can range from many shapes and sizes, from tiny critters to giant colossi. You have bosses that are easy to deal with, and others that while challenging, but fun to fight.

And then you have bosses that are absolute nightmares to fight, removing all the fun aspects you have had and can take hours to beat.

Capcom felt that Akuma wasn’t already a difficult SNK Boss in his inclusion in Street Fighter II, and thus brought in this monster known as Shin Akuma into Street Fighter Alpha. Source: Capcom vs. SNK 2.

Enter the SNK Bosses, the most dangerous type of boss you could fight against in any game. They are most common in fighting games serving as the final boss, but they have made appearances in other game genres. These bosses take the challenging aspect of the game you’re playing and crank it up to such an absurd level that you can’t help but feel like they’re cheating to beat you… which they definitely are.

Such advantages that SNK Bosses will have include:

• Being able to only block one way to avoid damage instead of a high and low block that everyone else needs.

• Super meters that will recharge on their own, and very fast too, allowing them to unleash more powerful attacks, or having no meter and being able to use them any time they want.

• Attacks that have massive priority and armour frames, negating all of yours and dealing 2/3’s of your health in one blow or instantly killing you.

• Having three times the health and unable to be staggered by your attacks.

The list goes on…

SNK Bosses were created during the days of arcade machines where their absurd difficulty was used to separate players from their pocket change, and providing those who do beat them a spot in the High Scores table. The origin of these bosses came from the company SNK, in the form of Rugal Bernstein from The King of Fighters ‘94. Since his creation, many fighting games have since added these kinds of bosses in their own games, with the difficulty only getting harder with every new one that’s made.

Originating from The King of Fighters 1994, Rugal Bernstein is THE first SNK Boss ever made surprising players with his absurd difficulty, and set in stone a long history of other very difficult SNK Bosses since then. Source: The King of Fighters 1994.

This has also caused other companies like Capcom and Arc System Works to follow SNK’s example, creating their own SNK Bosses in their games that manage to be just as terrifying if not more so. An example on Capcom’s side is Shin Akuma from the Street Fighter series, who very quickly gained infamy for his difficulty and ridiculous damage. Another example is Justice from Arc System Works’ Guilty Gear series, whose massive size and zoning attacks (characters who attack from afar) that can reach all the way across the screen have made her a nightmare to fight.

Justice is the first and most iconic SNK Boss made by Arc System Works, and she very quickly showed the world how ridiculous it was to fight her. Source: Guilty Gear XX.

You might be wondering why these kinds of bosses exist if they provide such a massive difficulty curve. The easiest answer for that is story purposes. These characters are often talked about in their respective games as being both powerful and terrifying and encounters against them will prove to players that such fear and hype is well deserving.

They aren’t just locked down to fighting games. Any games with a competitive nature and balance can also have these bosses as opponents. An example would be for racing games where the champion might have a car that is completely tricked out and knowledge of the whole course that gives them an advantage over you, regardless of what vehicle you choose.

Note that not all bosses that are super difficult are considered SNK Bosses. As stated above, only in games with a competitive nature will these bosses exist. In any other game genres like Role-Playing Games, the absurdly difficult bosses would instead be referred to as Superbosses, and that is a different list entirely.

Despite the difficulty of fighting Lingering Will in his fight, he is not an SNK Boss and instead referred to as a Superboss. Source: Kingdom Hearts HD 2.5 Remix.

So now you are a bit more familiar with this term and what it entails. Since the inclusion of Rugal in The King of Fighter series, many game companies have added their own SNK Boss into their games. For a majority of these bosses, they have tried to raise the difficulty for each one in every new game iteration. While some have lowered the difficulty to give players, especially newcomers of the genre, a chance to fight them, there is no denying that their creation has changed the fighting game genre.

Kyle Bacon

Kyle Bacon is a student at Algonquin with a passion for creative writing and video games. A quiet individual, but once you bring up a topic he likes, he will spend hours discussing it with you.

Gatekeeping In PC Gaming

Recently I’ve been spending a lot of time away from my main desktop at home, forcing me to put my laptop to use in order to work on classwork or surf the web. The laptop in question is nothing special, but it represents the bare minimum of what modern gaming can be in 2021, and that’s something none of the PC YouTubers would ever say. My Laptop is an HP with a Ryzen 4500u and 8GB of RAM, it has no graphics card and has to use the onboard graphics processor in the Ryzen chip. And because I waited for a sale I got it for the low low price of $649.99. But to my surprise, I have been able to have a very decent gaming experience on the laptop and I’ve been able to question what hardware you truly need to be able to game on PC in 2021. 

Simulating a new consumer trying to begin PC gaming I googled “Gaming PC 2021” and the first non-ad-related result was from pcgamer.com. Most of the recommended PCs are well over $2,000, and even under the best deals category, there's nothing under $1,000. And on a surface level, PC gaming is very exclusive and expensive, and if you were in middle school you could never afford a Gaming PC.

This is also how many online tech reviewers make it seem, that if you don't have the latest or greatest tech then your computer is old and slow, and that’s something I believed. After buying my first computer I began to do extra research online and slowly replaced every part in the whole system until it met the standards that I made up for myself from the reviews. And I know I’m not the only one. 

Since then I have been working at a PC hardware store, and my experiences with the younger generation prove that other people feel the same pressure. Often I have kids come in with their parents looking for gaming PCs. Most often these kids come in looking for $1,000 components totaling to $4,000 systems, something their parents are not interested in. But these kids have only been shown that side of the tech space. 

As I’ve experimented with gaming on my very basic laptop I’ve learned that you don’t need these crazy high-end components to have a very solid experience. Initially, I started things off slow as I had no expectations for my laptop at all. GTA San Andreas, a classic but a game from 2004. I thought the laptop would struggle a little, but it was no problem. I was able to play the whole game, and from that moment on I realized how open-ended gaming could be. 

Fortnite, Rocket League, and Minecraft were all fine. And these are some of the most popular games of today, even if they aren't the most demanding. But a more demanding title that has really grabbed me lately is the Latest Forza installment, Horizon 5. Even a short viewing of the launch trailer shows you that this is a beautiful game, but that also means it is the most intensive game available for me to test with. And while the game didn't look as good as the trailer it was still playable, and with my Xbox controller, I was racing just as well as I was on my main desktop.

A screenshot from the Forza Horizon 5 intro scene running on my laptop.

To me the journey was very exciting, testing the limits of my hardware and exploring how cheaply you could play these new games. It also made me reflect on how much I’ve spent on my desktop over the years and if I really had to make it as crazy as it is. But these kids don’t have that same hands-on experience, if only they knew their standards were so high, and that it doesn’t have to be the best of the best all the time. That they can still have amazing experiences on lower-end hardware.

Jack Slater

Jack is a professional writing student at Algonquin College and has a passion for tech and cars!

Spoilers for Mike Carey’s Lucifer (2000), Paul Jenkin’s Inhumans (1998), Swamp Thing Vol 2. (1984) and Hellblazer: Constantine.

Lucifer #43 (Vertigo, 2000)

There’s something fascinating in watching intricate and complex plans get executed to perfection. Something captivating about watching all the pieces come together to end in a masterstroke.

Chessmasters always have an objective and a plan to achieve it. They will make any gamble and sacrifice anyone necessary to complete that objective. In a pursuit of glory, money and power, the chessmaster villain has such control that the metaphorical pieces don’t even know they’re in the game. That’s what makes the chessmaster so dangerous. And terrifying.

But what about when the chessmaster is the hero of the story?

When we read a story where the chessmaster is a protagonist, our perspective has to shift. These characters make appalling sacrifices and take terrible risks throughout their stories. A likable and well-developed side character will, often unwillingly, become collateral damage as the hero makes their play to finish the game. How can we, the audience, appreciate and encourage such a ruthlessness? With a strong thematic character hook, that’s how.

In Mike Carey’s Lucifer series, the fallen angel Lucifer is obsessed with escaping predestination. He isn’t interested in people, souls, morality, or anything at all. Nothing except resenting an existence that anticipates every action he could possibly take.

So Lucifer finally devises a plan that he thinks will achieve his goal. Goading a bloody war with heaven and rescuing God’s demiurge, Micheal, Lucifer manages to create his own universe, a universe without destiny. When Micheal asks him what this new universe is for, Lucifer responds, “The culmination of all my efforts. The end of predestination. The end of tyranny. I have escaped providence.”

Then in Paul Jenkins’ Inhuman miniseries, the xenophobic Inhuman city of Attilan is under attack and their society roils from internal dissent stirred by the madman Maximus. The thematic line through the story is Black Bolt, the Inhuman leader, and his struggles as a ruler. Black Bolt is forced to constantly make decisions that cost lives and endanger his people. Silent and stoic, his inner monologue occasionally interjects the story to confront us with questions of how we might deal with the events of the story.

Inhumans Cover #5 (Marvel, 1998)

Vengeance #6 Cover (Marvel, 2012)

On the eve of defeat, Black Bolt’s plan is revealed- to bait the interlopers into a massive attack and stage a natural disaster that both forces back the invading army and falsifies the destruction of Attilan. The Inhumans are now hidden from the world and safe from interference.

Black Bolt has been holding all the cards the whole time but has sacrificed many lives to his end. The story closes with Black Bolt’s final question for the audience: “Imagine that you could save a family by sacrificing a child, but that you had to explain it to the child… What would you say?”

From the other side, Hellblazer explores what being a callous chessmaster can do to a person. In the pages of Swamp Thing (Alan Moore, 1984), John Constantine organizes a group of magical superhumans and entities in a bid to prevent the end of the world. While eventually successful, Constantine orders and then watches as many of his friends and comrades are killed in this battle.

In Hellblazer, Constantine struggles with the guilt of his decisions. Perhaps he had the best of intentions. Perhaps he didn’t really believe they would die. Or perhaps he just thought he could take it if they did.

Alcoholism, depression, and self-destructive tendencies plague Constantine wherever he goes and whatever he does. More battles rise and more friends fall into the pyre. As Constantine notes, “Getting too close to me can be bad for your health. I’m radioctive.”

A trope is what a writer makes of it. Strong motivations and character explorations can elevate stories and the tropes they use. Used well, tropes help us explore facets of story and human nature in dynamic and interesting ways. The Chessmaster is no different. Lucifer, Black Bolt, and Constantine might be chessmasters, but that’s just the lense by which we can examine their struggles with destiny, leadership, and guilt.

hellblazer: all his engines (Vertigo, 2005)

This is Andrew’s final blog post for Genre Savvy Grab Bag. You can read Andrew’s other blogposts here, here, and here!

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Andrew Gilvary

Andrew is a former graduate of the University of Ottawa where he got his B.A. with a Major in English Literature. He enjoys doing nerdy things and cuddling his cat.

It Was All a Dream

The villain is defeated, the kingdom is saved. Our hero has made many friends on his journey and learned a valuable lesson that will help him grow as a person. 

...And then he wakes up in his bed at home. It was all a dream. 

 The trope “It Was All a Dream” can be tricky to handle. Used poorly, it can remove tension from your story and potentially ruin any audience investment. There are certainly ways to make it work, but they necessitate careful planning by the creator.  

WandaVision, Created by Jac Schaeffer, Marvel Studios

WandaVision follows reality-bending witch Wanda Maximoff and her deceased-android-husband, Vision. After the events of Avengers: Endgame, Wanda and Vision appear to be living in an idyllic 60s style sitcom. The setting and tone are immediately very different from the Avengers movies that came before it.  

The fact that WandaVision is set in a dream world is not a grand revelation- it is apparent from the very beginning that this world is not the usual MCU fare. Instead, the driving force behind the plot is the question of what the dream world actually is, and how it will impact the world outside. Rather than a twist ending, the dream world is a catalyst for the story. By isolating WandaVision from the rest of the MCU in a dream world, the writers are able to create a more character-driven story. The world may be a dream, but the characters—inside and out—face very real stakes. 

Over The Garden Wall, Created by Patrick McHale, Cartoon Network Studios

Where WandaVision used its dream world as a jumping-off point for the story, Over the Garden Wall features the dream reveal as a late-story twist.  

Over the Garden Wall follows brothers Wirt and Greg, as well as a talking bluebird named Beatrice, as they travel through a supernatural forest called the Unknown. The story begins in medias res , with no explanation for how Wirt and Greg arrived in the Unknown, or even where the Unknown is. In the penultimate episode, it is revealed that the brothers are from the real world and wound up in the Unknown after falling into a pond and getting knocked unconscious on Halloween. 

However, there is no clear answer for what the Unknown actually is. Although Wirt and Greg do end the series waking in the real world, the show reveals to the audience how life for other characters has continued on in the Unknown.  The show never fully reveals whether the Unknown was merely a dream or a different world altogether. Whatever the world may be, it continues to exist outside of Wirt and Greg’s experience in it.  

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2, Directed by Bill Condon, Summit Entertainment

On the opposite end of the spectrum is Breaking Dawn: Part 2 which features one of the most infuriating dream reveals in YA history. 

The entire Twilight series has been culminating to this; a final standoff between the Cullens and the Volturi. There is a nearly 10-minute long battle between the vampire clans, with major character deaths on both sides. Finally, the Cullens come out victorious and all the Volturi are defeated. 

Just kidding. 

The drawn-out fight sequence was merely a vision of a potential future, shown to the Volturi by Alice to prevent a real battle. And for some reason, the Volturi just accept this and leave. That’s it.  

Even a relatively small dream reveal can ruin audience investment. If one scene not mattering is enough to annoy audiences, imagine how annoying it is when the entire story doesn’t matter.  

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“It Was All a Dream” is a very risky trope to utilize. The bigger your reveal, the bigger the risk of undermining your entire story. This is a trope that can retroactively make your story weaker. 

With the right tweaks, this trope can be used (sparingly) to create an interesting and compelling story. When played straight, it can make your audience resentful for getting invested in a story that wound up not mattering. Like all tropes, “It Was All a Dream” can be very effective in the right hands. Just make sure you know what you’re getting into.

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Cor O’Neill

Cor is a Professional Writing student at Algonquin and a horror enthusiast. If he’s not working at the library or attending class, he’s usually creating in some form. He writes in a wide variety of genres and his life dream is to meet Mothman.

Bag of Spilling

Imagine this scenario. You’re playing through a game, going from level to level fighting against enemies with all the weapons you have on your character. You reach a certain point in the game, ready to face the next challenge…

Except all of your weapons are gone. All that time you spent searching every corner of the levels you’ve gone through to find them, all the ammo for those weapons. Everything is just gone except for either your fists or what you had when you started the game.

This is known as Bag of Spilling, and it’s a common trope in gaming that is just as irritating as it sounds. One of the most well known rules when it comes to gaming is that items and experience levels are never carried over to sequels, regardless of how much time has passed. In terms of direct sequels, this makes no sense, but the general explanation is that it’s meant to present a fair challenge to the player.

Imagine all those dice blocks as the weapons and upgrades you spent tirelessly collecting in the game, only for them to all go away in the sequel.

While this is usually accepted, there are some games that provide weak explanations or outright refuse to share anything, leaving you wondering how this character went from being a legitimate badass to a complete rookie in the span of a few months. Were they on vacation and didn’t bother to bring their stuff with them because it wasn’t needed? Were they out of shape because it’s been months or years since the world was saved? Was their stuff stolen through physical or magical means? Regardless of the reason, the results wind up being the same thing.

Metroid is a well known example of a series where you are constantly suffering from Bag of Spilling in each game. It doesn’t matter how many upgrades you get for your Power Suit, or how many missiles or bombs you collect to destroy your enemies faster. The moment you start the next game of the series, everything you had gone out of your way to collect disappears. While they at least try to justify a reason for you losing everything at the start, only a few games in the series actually give you a proper explanation while everything else is just shoehorned in without question

In terms of the timeline, Super Metroid takes place at least a few weeks after Metroid 2. So how did Samus, renowned bounty hunter of the galaxy, lose all her gear in that amount of time? Pictued Above: Metroid: Samus Returns (Metroid 2) (Left), Super Metroid (Right).

While The Legend of Zelda series could be considered another example, it’s ends up forgoing the trope for a different reason, in that each game is set in a different point of time, usually generations or centuries apart. This means that the Link you play as is a completely separate Link from the past games.

With the exception of at least a couple, every game in the Zelda series has a completely different Link you play as, thus rendering the trope mute. Pictured: Zelda Timeline from the Hyrule Historia.

It doesn’t just have to be sequels that do this. This can also happen in the middle of the game you’re playing. The original Doom released back in 1993, as well as its sequel, are the best early example of this thanks to how they’re structured. The full version of the original Doom consists of four episodes, each one about eight levels long (nine when counting secret levels). Throughout those levels you’ll find a large amount of weapons and ammo to help you fight demons. But once you start the next episode, you’re back to only your fists and your pistol. You could chalk it up to demonic forces at play, but you literally just had them a minute ago. How did you wind up losing them all so quickly? The game never gives you a proper answer, and you’re left with nothing but annoyance as a result.

Have fun collecting these weapons all over again for every new episode. Pictured: The weapons in Doom II.

This can also happen in other genres like Role-Playing Games, where certain events may cause something to happen to your character and they lose all the stuff they have on them. This is usually done in the form of death, being thrown into jail, an illness that leaves them out of commission, or just off doing something elsewhere and they lose their stuff as a result. The list goes on, but the results remain the same.

Regardless of what game you play or what genre it’s in, if it gives you the ability to upgrade/level up your character and there’s a sequel, expect it all to be gone. What’s considered a fair challenge by the developers is nothing more than an excuse to just depower a character you had spent so long to strengthen up. Gameplay-wise, it at least makes sense since you would be very overpowered for the next game when you start it. In terms of story, there is none of that.

Kyle Bacon

Kyle Bacon is a student at Algonquin with a passion for creative writing and video games. A quiet individual, but once you bring up a topic he likes, he will spend hours discussing it with you.

My Turn

We’ve got him now! The baddie is against the ropes, time to hit them with our signature move, it never fails. An all or nothing onslaught of attacks ensue, the dust settles, and there stands...... the unharmed baddie? With a confident smirk they say, My Turn. 

The My Turn trope is the classic turning point of a fight when the hero (or villain) survives an incredible attack from the opposition, but is unscathed and more confident. Ready to dish out a dramatically more incredible attack on the opposition. 

These moments are perfect for grabbing the audience’s attention and letting them know how strong a character truly is. Bonus points if the character looks frail and weak for the ultimate blindside. 

Look no further than the 2018 hit game God of War. Near the opening of the game Kratos, (the literal mythological God of War) is met with a tattooed stranger who is small and feeble in appearance, at least compared to Kratos. The stranger insults Kratos and asks for a fight, Kratos being the God he is, destroys the stranger with the hardest hit to the head I’ve seen in a video game. But the stranger gets right back up and the immortal phrase leaves his mouth. My turn, and hits Kratos with a gut punch sending him soaring over his own house! 

Now at this point most of us have seen a My Turn moment at least once before, but even though we see it coming it still has a very valuable place in action. These moments let us know that this battle will be larger than any of the battles we’ve seen with this character before, and that it won't be easy.  

This trope can be seen 1v1 like in my previous example but it can also be seen in a similar fashion when our hero is attacked by ten henchmen, oftentimes we lose sight of our hero as they’re trampled and buried in an onslaught of punches and kicks. But our hero will bounce back knocking them all away before beating them all. 

However this trope is highly versatile, in fact the first time I can remember witnessing it wasn't even in an action movie, it was in the little known 2010 film Despicable Me. After Gru’s adopted children fail to beat a rigged carnival game Gru stepped things up a notch. Reaching for an oversized laser gun Gru says My Turn in his classic accent, shortly before blasting the entire game stall out of existence. And to this day, I quote that scene at least on a weekly basis to the annoyance of friends and family. But to me it proves how powerful this trope can be and is. I was only 9 when I first saw that film, and still that comedic My Turn is branded into my mind. 

To me the My Turn trope is one of the best and most versatile tropes there is. It’s open ended nature puts us all on the back foot, in those moments when the good guy is getting assaulted by the bad guy we all pause, unsure if this will be a classic My Turn moment or if this is an elaborate set up to put us into a false sense of security. But no matter the circumstances, or how many times we’ve seen it before, the My Turn trope will always be a moment that hypes up the audience.

Jack Slater

Jack is a video game loving computer nerd, with a passion for learning new topics and exploring how the world works.

Believe Everything. The Earth may have been birthed from primordial Chaos, as the Greek myths say. That doesn’t mean that Odin didn’t fashion the Earth from bones and blood of Ymir the Frost Giant. It also doesn’t mean that Izanagi didn’t create the Earth using his jeweled spear. It all happened. Well, most of it. Maybe.

In a story that explains how the myth of Orpheus is true, death proclaims that other myths do not necessarily apply (Sandman- The Song of Orpheus, DC comics)

This trope has been a mainstay of contemporary fantasy for years, across almost every medium imaginable. Supernatural and metaphysical events from multiple world mythologies can share the same space in stories that engage this trope. Any and all legends and folklore are up for grabs. Even God with a capital G is a frequent resource to mine in these stories. Examples of this trope include- television series like Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, Charmed, and Supernatural- video games such as God of War and Assassin’s Creed- comic books like Hellboy, Fables, and Sandman- and in books such as Harry Potter, The Dresden Files and American Gods.

Mining the rich mythological traditions of different world religions is a really effective tool in story writing. Using world mythologies that the reader might be familiar with engages them. And a good writer can take advantage of that intrigue.

In Neil Gaiman’s stupendously excellent Sandman series, for example, gods are created from the power of human worship (not necessarily belief). Gods who remain popular, like Odin or Thor, also remain powerful; less popular gods, like the Egyption goddess Bast, are withering away. When Gaiman begins to introduce aliens in this universe then the audience has to wonder, “do these people’s gods exist?” What do the gods of aliens even look like? (Whoops, wrong comic book universe)

Believe Everything is also effective because, ironically, it means the audience doesn’t know what to expect. Contrary to the trope name, not everything is true when it comes to the mythology being adapted. Another example from Sandman is the Orpheus myth, a central piece of mythology to the through-narrative of the comic. In this version, Orpheus visits Death to learn how to enter the underworld, understanding that the Greek hero Herakles had done so. Death disillusions Orpheus, and the audience, on the reliability of those Herakles exploits (see image above). This subversion sets up an important rule and theme for the entire narrative; avoiding death might actually be worse than dying.

Winged Horses are “technology” you see (Thor- Ragnarok, Marvel Studios)

Often it is prudent to create rules for why, or at least how, the creatures and characters of mythology exist within the world. Hellboy comics play it straight where mythical beings are simply a part of the world just like humans; not all folklore is true, but folklore is inspired by beings’ existence. On the other hand is Marvel comics, where the godly heroes of Asgard are actually aliens with technology so advanced it seems like magic.

This isn’t an issue in stories like Harry Potter, where the magical world is kept secret, including the magical creatures. The mythical creatures, like Fluffy and Buckbeak, are simply an extension of the zoology of that narrative. However, the rules need to made clear in worlds like Marvel’s so that readers understand how these characters might be allowed to interact with a non-myth narrative. If Loki is an alien, we can expect that myths where he transformed into a mare and gave birth to an eight-legged horse are not applicable, for better or for worse.

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Andrew Gilvary

Andrew is a former graduate of the University of Ottawa where he got his B.A. with a Major in English Literature. He enjoys doing nerdy things and cuddling his cat.

Secret Worlds

Growing up, I would often daydream about finding a magical world in the woods or under the stairs; a world where I could explore, do magic, and be a hero. I imagine that fantasies like this are common among many children, which could explain the massive popularity of stories with Secret Worlds in the last few decades.

Neil Gaiman uses this concept a lot, with stories across all age groups

In fantasy, a common way to keep a clear distinction between what is normal and what is magical is with a Secret World—a magical world hidden from the normal world, usually right under the noses of regular people. Having an ordinary person stumble upon a secret society is a great hook to begin your story, and an outsider to your world gives the author an easy excuse to explain the rules of said world.  

But how do these worlds remain secret? How do these magic societies remain undetected from the general public? The way a creator hides their secret world can be a key part in building up a believable universe that a reader can get invested in, as well as helping their story stand out from others in the same genre.

Part urban fantasy, part detective noir—all awesome

The Dresden Files is an Urban Fantasy Noir series, following wizard/detective Harry Dresden. The series is set primarily in Chicago, which is rife with supernatural activity—vampire courts and wizard councils, werewolf clans and fairy kingdoms.  Throughout the series, there are huge, magical, public battles, usually with a body count. There is a Special Investigations division of Chicago PD specifically for strange events. Even Dresden himself is listed in the phone book as a wizard.  That’s a lot of magical activity for one city. So how does this world stay a secret?

As far as the general population is concerned, the world of The Dresden Files is the same as ours. So of course, magic isn’t real because this is the real world. Harry Dresden is typically considered a loon or a conman, and the SI division is seen as a group of loser cops, forced to deal with crackpot conspiracy theories. The magical societies of Chicago remain secret mostly by the fact that most of the world simply refuses to believe that they exist. The public is always more comfortable with a mundane explanation for supernatural events—explanations often encouraged by Dresden and the SI division.

The Percy Jackson series has expanded to more than 15 books exploring the secret world of Greek gods

Next, we have the Percy Jackson series. Percy Jackson is a series of Young Adult Fantasy novels that follow the modern-day children of Greek gods. Our heroes face off against monsters, magic, and even gods themselves—often in extremely public locations like New York City. Yet, the regular people of America are unaware of the supernatural events around them, thanks to the magical influence of Mist.

 Mist is a magical force in Percy Jackson that alters people’s perception of magical occurrences, replacing them with more mundane sights. Percy’s sword often appears as a bat, and a confrontation with the god Ares appears as a shootout between two humans. Mist does not only impact normal humans but demigods like Percy as well. This makes Mist both a useful tool for worldbuilding and for revealing plot elements.

Of course, these two stories are far from the only examples of Secret Worlds, but they do have very different solutions to the same problem. So, is one better than the other? Is there a “best” way to use your Secret World?

There are countless ways to hide a Secret World, whether it’s through magic, ignorance, or simply a very specific method of access. What works for one story may not work for another. As long as the rules of your world are consistent, a reader can be willing to believe a lot. But that’s one of the most enjoyable parts about creating a Secret World—the only rules are the ones that you decide. The only limit on your world is your own imagination.

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Cor O’Neill

Cor is a Professional Writing student at Algonquin and a horror enthusiast. If he’s not working at the library or attending class, he’s usually creating in some form. He writes in a wide variety of genres and his life dream is to meet Mothman.

Acceptable Breaks From Reality

Let’s take a moment to picture this scenario. You’re currently playing the new First-Person Shooter (FPS) game that’s focusing on the trench warfare of World War I (WWI). You just went through the tutorial and you start playing the first stage, you encounter several enemies and try to shoot at them…

Wait a moment. You just got shot multiple times. How are you still standing and not dead?

You scramble to cover and find tucked in a corner a medpack. You rush over to go grab it… and somehow at the speed of sound you emptied the entire contents of the medpack and healed yourself back to full health, as if you weren’t just shot a whole bunch.

When you’re on the brink of death or just running a fever, grab a health kit and be instantly revitalized. Source: Halo Series.

You find this very weird since the game said it would be a realistic depiction of WWI, so you move on to another game. This new game is a survival game where you need to build and forage in order to survive. You start the game up and…

Wait, how are you building all these structures so quickly with so little materials? How are able to make full course meals with just a few things you had on your hand? How are you able to physically carry all these things you have been picking up without any issue? What is going on?

Think this is an absurd amount to be carrying around? This is one of several pages. Source: Genshin Impact.

These instances you have just experienced are referred to as Acceptable Breaks From Reality, or Breaks for short, and they are more or less essential when making games. There are certain elements of both story and gameplay where realism would make it either tedious, difficult or confusing for the audience. In order to change these elements, there are workarounds that will make them more unrealistic to a blatant point, and no one really minds. There are a number of reasons why they exist, so let’s take a moment to go through the obvious ones.

The main reason is rather obvious. Reality, compared to gaming, is boring. Sure there are a lot of things you can do in real life that can keep you entertained, but for video games it’s a different thing entirely. The main appeal of games is to be in the action right away, to go from point A to point B as quickly as you can or accomplish whatever task it’s telling you to do. You don’t want to be held back because the game is making you wait several hours for it to finish cooking that pot of roast you were making.

Just grab a few ingredients you need and you can enjoy these wondrous meals. Source: Odin Sphere.

That’s why most games remove many aspects of reality from games, so players don’t have to wait needlessly long hours to just continue playing.

FPS games as mentioned in the scenario are built around the fast-paced combat and going from one spot to another very quickly. Even when you get shot a bunch, unless it is directly in the head, you still have a chance to react and fight back. Having a system in the game that lets you automatically regenerate your health when enough time passes or picking up medpacks that heal you instantly are good ways to help you keep up with the fast pace action.

The 2016 reboot of DOOM thrives on its gameplay that very much has you running around gunning down demons. If realism was involved, you would have long been dead before the first demon showed up. Source: DOOM 2016.

If reality was thrown into the gameplay, we would see games where dying once removes your entire save file forcing you to start all over, or spending several weeks to a few months in a hospital recovering. Neither one is something that you want to see in a game.

Let’s go back to the survival game as mentioned in the scenario. While it does seem silly to make the structures and food so much faster than you would in real life, it makes sense for the game. If you were to spend the actual amount of time building a single hut or a simple meal, the interest in the game would fall completely. Again, no one wants to spend that much time doing something in the game, so why not make it easier for the player?

Time spent building all this in The Forest = Over 4 hours. Time spent building all this in real life = Possibly weeks. Source: The Forest.

Another reason as to why these breaks exist is because of memory and time. Games require plenty of memory in order to run things, and too much used up will either slow down the game or make it crash completely. That’s why most games will make enemies disappear when they are beaten, because having them remain on screen would take up more memory.

For time, that’s primarily for the time spent making the game. Developers spend a long amount of time making games, and in some cases they will try to find a shortcut for some parts of the game so that they can spend more time working on other parts. Games that have multiple weapons like swords or axes but having the same model is one such example, as it would take a very long time to individually design each and every weapon. This isn’t noticeable now, but it was more common for games to do this over a decade ago.

There are several other examples of reality being broken in order to make the game as it is. Monsters giving you money or items when they physically shouldn’t be able to carry them. Human characters having an absurdly high jump or even able to double jump when in reality no one could jump that high. Features in the game that while don’t make sense story wise are purely there to keep the player from getting frustrated. Items being placed in rather bizarre spots that they shouldn’t be in.

Where exactly was this thing hiding the Dark Shield it was carrying? Sometimes it’s best to not question these things. Source: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.

Sometimes however, these breaks can be obstructive. If they become too much, it’s possible for them to get in the way of enjoying the game. Some media creators will even go further and not use some of these breaks due to having different tolerances between abstraction and simulation. These games made by these creators however wind up being more catered to a niche audience, and even then there are still measures taken to prevent things from getting too boring.

The best way to simplify it is this; if what is happening on screen is something that isn’t possible in real life, then it’s a break from reality.

The only type of games that actually do not take shortcuts with time spent doing stuff are mobile games or simulation games. This is primarily because they are built to be played on a daily basis, with most mobile games giving you daily rewards for doing so. Simulation games, especially ones revolving around management or construction, require long hours of playing in order to “level up” and have access to more resources to continue playing.

Factorio pictured above is an example of a simulation game requiring numerous hours of playing in order to acquire more resources. Source: Factorio.

So now you are a bit more familiar with this trope and what exactly it entails. It’s honestly very surprising just how many breaks exist and how often we take them for granted or just ignore since they make gaming easier. And with video games continuing to be made with new ideas being implemented or old ones being improved on, we can definitely be seeing more of these Breaks in the near future.

Kyle Bacon

Kyle Bacon is a student at Algonquin with a passion for creative writing and video games. A quiet individual, but once you bring up a topic he likes, he will spend hours discussing it with you.

Offscreen Teleportation

With the theme of Halloween fresh in all of our minds I thought it would be fun to explore a classic horror movie trope, Offscreen Teleportation. It might sound extremely sci-fi but let me break it down for you. Oh no! The creepy guy with the mask just found you! It's time to run. You run up three flights of stairs, through a hallway, and towards the closet, but when you open the closet.... THERE HE IS! While some may be quick to call this trope a lazy way to get a quick scare, and be right while doing so, it is surprisingly effective. 

While a scenario like that is oftentimes completely impossible or at best a really lucky break for the killer, that is the very reason it's so effective. The killer being able to find a faster way up a building and into a closet you found while running in a panicked state? Unlikely, but because of it being so unlikely it can often catch the audience off guard. 

On the flip side it can be used to great effect when the teleportation is intermittent, leaving the audience guessing with every slow doorknob turn. However, when teleportation is the only upper hand the otherwise perfectly realistic villain has then the fun and suspense can be ruined.

This trope was used to great effect in the movie Don’t Breathe from 2016. In this movie our killer is a blind man with supersonic hearing. Most of the time we can hear him sneaking around the old creaky house, but he always manages to get where we least want him, all without making a sound. This use of offscreen teleportation is great because the more realistic the situation the harder the audience falls for it. 

Alternatively the offscreen teleportation can be used in many other genres, including comedy and adventure. In many depictions of Batman, from movies to video games, it is used to great effect. Instead of scaring the audience it looks awesome. Our caped crusader is seen hanging in the rafters observing joker's goons, in the next shot he’s right behind the henchmen and takes them out with a POW! and THWAP!

But it's a double edged sword. How many times has Batman successfully caught a villian, only for the bad guy to magically escape and disappear into the night? I’m looking at you joker....

I’m sure we can all recall a moment when a character in a cartoon looks through a pair of binoculars and sees someone on the horizon, only to look down from the binoculars to see that same person standing in front of them. Throw in some dust settling and the character coming to a stop the way a spring door stop does and it's hilarious! 

JACK SLATER

I am a writer trapped in a nerd’s body, and I love analyzing my favourite tropes!

From top to bottom: Master Roshi from Dragonball (Toei Animation), Iroh from Avatar -the last Airbender (Nickolodeon), Gandalf from The lord of the rings (new line cinema), and Dumbledore from the harry potter series (bloomsbury publishing).

This trope is everywhere. It’s cross-cultural and intergenerational in its ubiquity. A wise elderly mentor figure with a (usually) gentle disposition gets put in a dangerous situation and they need to unleash a can of whoop-ass. Of course, power ages like fine wine. Bonus points if the character is portrayed as being physically hobbled by their age, walking with a stoop, or being physically out of shape. Double bonus points when the character uses a cane, staff, or walking stick of some kind. Triple bonus points when they get to surprise everyone by how powerful they really are. Beards are, ironically, unnecessary but these characters are almost universally male.

When I said this  trope is everywhere, I really meant it. Among many others, the examples pictured left include Dumbledore from Harry Potter, Master Roshi from the Dragonball franchise, Iroh from Avatar: The Last Airbender, and Gandalf from The Lord of the Rings. These characters deviate from the broader wise old mentor archetype because they are not only wise but also exceptionally skilled or powerful in their narrative.

A common trait of these old badasses is that they are almost always teachers, mentors, or at least guides for their subordinate characters. Their age is nebulous but don’t be surprised in a fantasy setting when these characters are much older than you think (even when you already believe they are unnaturally ancient). Their narrative purpose is usually not only to teach but also to protect the protagonist until they are ready to face the villain. Their eccentricities usually make them societal outcasts, or at least outsiders- eccentricities ranging from the fact that they’re a wizard (Gandalf), their distaste for violence (Iroh), or their aversion to political posturing (Dumbledore). Or maybe they’re just a pervert (Roshi).

What makes this trope interesting is its versatility. Despite fulfilling comparably identical roles, these characters can be bent and shaped to fit many different themes and stories. Gandalf represents a nostalgia for a bygone age, while Dumbledore has been wizened by the mistakes and arrogance of his youth. Iroh is a parental figure to the banished Prince Zuko, while Oogway from Kung Fu Panda is a philosophical and spiritual guide to his students. Roshi is not only Son Goku’s first martial arts master but also serves as a benchmark for Goku to inevitably surpass.

This flexibility carries over to how the narrative deals with having such inconveniently powerful characters. Sometimes the narrative will be built around a conflict that the mentor cannot deal with single-handedly, such as Yoda from Star Wars, or that they do not qualify to participate in, like Mr. Miyagi in The Karate Kid. Iroh steps aside so that the main character can do the right thing in the final confrontation. At other times the villain must plot to surreptitiously remove the mentor from the conflict, as Loki to Odin from Thor.

Often, these characters sacrifice themselves so that they may pass the torch to the main protagonists, such as Obi Wan from Star Wars, Dumbledore, and Gandalf the Grey (he’s resurrected as Gandalf the White). Regardless of the circumstances, these characters are almost always conspicuously absent from the action of the story, or at least the arc where they teach. Every once and a while though, they get to stick around. Or, the most fun option of all, sometimes the old badass cuts loose and joins the fight. Oh look, the big guy’s back…

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Andrew Gilvary

Andrew is a former graduate of the University of Ottawa where he got his B.A. with a Major in English Literature. He enjoys doing nerdy things and cuddling his cat.

Redemption Arcs

Everybody loves a good villain. They help drive the plot, provide a foil to the protagonist, and are great at capturing audience attention. It’s not unusual for the villain to be the most memorable character in a story.

But sometimes, you want the villain to be more than just a villain- you want them to be a hero. Maybe they have a tragic backstory, or good banter with the protagonist, or you just have a crush on them. Whatever the reason, it’s not uncommon for a villain to transition to a more heroic role.

However, redemption arcs can be tricky to do right. Let’s compare two of the most popular examples of redemption arcs—with varying success. 

The Good: Prince Zuko from Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Bad: Kylo Ren from the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy

On a surface level, Prince Zuko from Avatar: The Last Airbender and Kylo Ren from Star Wars are similar. They both…

• want to live up to their family’s legacy

• struggle to choose the right path

• reject their loving father figures

• betray the hero to claim their birthright

The key differences between them are the actions they take and the major events that finally solidify their change of heart. First, let’s look at Zuko.

Prince Zuko

Throughout the first season of Avatar, Zuko hunts the protagonists across the globe, opposing them at almost every turn. However, from as early as episode 3 Zuko is portrayed in a more empathetic light than most other villains in the series. He was physically scarred by his father and exiled from his home. His only chance to regain his honour was a wild goose chase to capture the seemingly dead Avatar. Despite his circumstances, there are multiple instances that showcase Zuko’s capabilities for good, one of the most notable when he protects an Earth Kingdom village in Zuko Alone.

Zuko’s journey is not a simple one, however. Just when it seems like he’s going to become good, he betrays the heroes and once again joins the Fire Nation. Zuko gets everything he thinks he wanted—his honour, the respect of his family, a home. But he eventually realizes that the life he was chasing wasn’t what he needed. He cuts out his toxic family and joins team Avatar. Zuko works to prove himself and make up for his past actions. His character journey is long and difficult, but Zuko consistently works to better himself and strive for good.

The Force Awakens begins with Kylo Ren slaughtering a village. He captures and tortures different characters, kills his unarmed father, and helps the First Order commit genocide on a star system. It’s not a good first impression.

Like Zuko, Kylo Ren seems to have a brief turn to good in the second chapter. After working with Rey to defeat the villain, Kylo decides to become the new leader of the First Order and ends up working under a different evil boss in the form of Palpatine.

Kylo returns to the same state we met him in, hunting Rey and working for the villains. Then, after a brief lecture from his dead father, he decides that he’s good now. He helps defeat Palpatine, saves Rey’s life, kisses her, and immediately dies.

Kylo Ren

Kylo Ren’s redemption is less satisfying than Zuko’s, and there’s one big reason why: choice. After stumbling many times, Zuko chooses to join the heroes, and he keeps choosing to help despite their distrust of him. He works to redeem himself, even when it’s difficult. For Kylo Ren, it feels like he was compelled to be good by others, with little agency. Even after changing sides, he doesn’t have to atone for his actions because he just dies.

Redemption arcs are a tricky trope. While it can be done, it takes a lot of effort to be both believable and satisfying. Sometimes it’s easier for a villain to stay a villain.

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Cor O’Neill

Cor is a Professional Writing student at Algonquin and a horror enthusiast. If he’s not working at the library or attending class, he’s usually creating in some form. He writes in a wide variety of genres and his life dream is to meet Mothman.

Underground Monkey

When you think their numbers couldn’t get any higher…

You might find this a rather bizarre name to give to any trope, but if you’re familiar with RPGs or Metroidvanias, you’ll have already encountered this trope in some form and not realize it. Often times there are enemies that are introduced very early on in the game that are soon dealt with. You travel further in the game and enter a new area, and suddenly that enemy you fought before in an earlier level is now back, but with a new colour, new name, new abilities and buffed stats.

This is where the term Underground Monkey comes into play. It’s essentially an enemy’s sprite or design being reused for later areas with the changes mentioned to make them ‘different’ enough from their weaker versions to give players more enemies to deal with. Most see this as a form of laziness with the developers reusing sprites to just make them harder, but there is an actual reason for this. A lot of older games, especially on the NES and SNES, are limited in what they can do in terms of the consoles hardware. Rather than make entirely new sprites that would eat up more of the file size, it’d be easier to simply reuse them since they are already there and just change the colour to help differentiate them.

Another reason could be a way of telling the story more without the use of text. Certain enemies you have dealt with before are getting stronger the further along you go on your journey, with new traits to back up that point. Animals like wolves can have subspecies that have adapted to their new environments, gaining traits that give them an advantage over their cousins. If done correctly, reusing sprites can be an effective way of providing more story for the game without being up in your face about it.

An example of reusing sprites shown above with 6 of the 15 wolf enemies you encounter in Final Fantasy XII. Despite the visual differences, this is an example of Underground Monkey.

In smaller length games, there is about three or four enemies that share the same sprite, though in longer games that range can jump to ten or so enemies or even higher. Reusing sprites isn’t necessarily limited to just normal enemies alone. Unique enemies like those found in hunts, optional encounters, or even bosses can fall under this category. This is especially prominent in MMOs.

Yiazmat, the Superboss of FFXII, shares a similar design with the optional Hell Wyrm boss, and in general the various Fell Wyrm enemies in the game.

Sometimes it doesn’t necessarily have to be limited to just RPGs or Metroidvanias. Other genre of games can also have reused sprites in one way or another. One example is Beat-em-Ups where enemies will have palette swaps, with that enemy having a new name and the various changes entailed, but still visually the same kind of enemy. Tower Defense games will also reuse enemies but may try to change things up by giving a few of them unique traits.

Some enemies in Arknights will also fall under the category of Underground Monkey with one another, despite looking vastly different from one another.

Most games will try to give these altered enemies additional benefits to differentiate them, like dealing more damage to your characters when they have a status ailment on them, or move faster when another enemy is on the field. These changes, while subtle, can help make these enemies dangerous in their own way.

So now you’re a bit more familiar with this trope and how it’s used in games. If you were already aware of it, congrats! Now try and see if you can recall any games you played in the past few years that have followed this trope.

Spoilers for DC’s The Golden Age, B.P.R.D.: Hell on Earth, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the films The Avengers, and The Avengers: Endgame.

The Golden age #4 (DC Comics). The trope namer (most dialogue removed)

Heroes are fighting valiantly but they’re losing ground, and numbers, fast. Dynaman seems invincible; he floats above, ready to end them all at whim. The best they’ve done is knock his helmet off, tatter his cape. In this hopeless situation, Alan Scott, the Green Lantern, finally arrives on the battlefield. Scott goes toe-to-toe with Dynaman, finally drawing blood and single-handedly holding back the massacre. The hero Johnny Quick watches his friend with relief; finally, “...the big guy’s back.”

If you’re a fan of comics or even just superheroes, you should read James Robinson’s The Golden Age. It’s got a wild cast, the plot is that weird kind of campy and horrifically dark that you get from golden age comics, and the writing is just ridiculously thematically rich. But it’s the moment above that has lived in my brain rent-free for almost 20 years now. “...The big guy’s back.”

This trope is a sort of blend of other tropes. It’s the return of a single, established, powerful character to the narrative and that arrival turning the tide or tipping the balance of a conflict, either on a large or small scale. When this trope benefits the protagonists, it can be a moment of relief, hope, and invigoration. Not just for the characters but for the audience. When Bruce Banner arrives in New York in the MCU film The Avengers, the heroes can finally go on the offensive. In the same vein, in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (the book more than the film), Dumbledore’s arrival to fight Voldemort completely shifts the trajectory of the battle in the Department of Mysteries.

B.P.R.D.: Hell on Earth, #101 (Dark Horse Comics)

The trope is also distinctive for lacking certain traits. The character's arrival does not mark the end of the conflict. My first paragraph is a bit misleading right? Because what I didn’t mention is that Scott is ultimately defeated. His efforts finally expose a weakness that the other heroes can exploit but it’s not Scott that marks Dynaman’s end. Hulk’s arrival In The Avengers doesn’t end the battle; the heroes still have to close the portal summoning the aliens. Voldemort only flees when he fails to possess Harry.

This trope also doesn’t need to benefit the protagonist. When applied in the villain’s favour you get things like the resurrection of The Black Flame in B.P.R.D.: Hell on Earth. When he’s resurrected, the reader knows immediately that things have just gotten bad for the heroes. And they’re right because the Black Flame immediately transforms the narrative; the story goes from one of humanity trying to maintain its lifestyle in a dangerous and chaotic world to humanity simply trying to survive the apocalypse. It’s a moment of dread, anxiety, and despair.

“...The big guy’s back” is a pretty common trope. It’s easy to execute properly when you have a large or diverse cast and it has the potential for a huge emotional payout for the reader or audience. In Golden Age, Scott joining in the battle is a culmination of his restraint where he doesn’t want to play God. In The Avengers, we finally see Hulk directing his rage and working with others. Five books of Harry Potter say that Dumbledore is the only wizard that Voldemort fears and we finally get to see why. And in B.P.R.D., there’s no going back when the Black Flame steps out.

There are dangers though. If the character returning is only established in a separate narrative block then their return won’t have an impact on the audience members that didn’t consume that story. In exceptionally bad cases, this trope can feel like a deus ex machina if the character or their abilities weren’t established enough. But most times? This is so rad.

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Andrew Gilvary

Andrew is a former graduate of the University of Ottawa where he got his B.A. with Major in English Literature. He enjoys doing nerdy things and cuddling his cat.

Power Up Food

A trope I find interesting is the Power-Up Food trope. The basic concept that eating a food or power-up will instantly heal or charge up a character. Most often seen in video games where healing is often a core gameplay mechanic. But also seen in cartoons, such as Popeye, where spinach was his power-up food. Giving Popeye super strength immediately after eating the food. This is nothing new to the video game world however. With early games such as Pacman revolving around eating fruit to increase your score, and pellets which charge up Pacman to eat the ghosts. This is clearly a very basic example of an idea that had not been fully fleshed out yet, but in the years to come game designers would play with their food and create new ways to incorporate this idea. 

Pacman eating a Power-Up Pellet

Only five short years after Pacman’s pellets first hit the scene, Super Mario Bros was released with new power-up foods and new ways to implement them. It was no longer as simple as a magic pellet solving all of your problems. A basic magic mushroom would double your lifespan and size to defeat all Gombas in your path. And honestly, I think it’s a great way to encourage a younger audience to eat healthily. If you see your favourite characters eating fruits and vegetables to become strong and healthy you’ll be sure to follow suit. We also start to dabble into what can be used as “power-up food” A flower being used to give fire powers. While not traditionally a food, it still works and was the start of a new theme in gaming.

Even in more modern games like Call Of Duty and Far Cry we can see the power-up foods and items that carry on the tradition of the foods. In the latest installment of Call Of Duty Zombies we can see food items (bananas, apples, cookies, cakes, etc.) being used to instantly heal players from the brink of death. After a player is thrown from a building and mauled by zombies, all it takes is a few bananas and we’re just as good as new. In the Far Cry series it is less direct but the same themes can be seen. Often after being shot many times or attacked by wild animals, our character will begin to heal themselves. Regardless of the injury the same piece of gauze is brought out to wrap a cut on our arm. Shot in the head? Gauze to the arm. Have your legs been eaten off? Gauze to the arm. And while it's not food, the theme of instant health or power in reality mocking ways clearly carries on. If you’d like to see specific examples of Far Cry’s hilarious health mechanics I would recommend THIS Gamology video where a doctor talks about how unrealistic the healing is. 

Why do these power-up foods exist? One could argue that they are a lazy placeholder for a game developer not wanting to put the time in to make a proper healing system. That if a character is damaged they will need healing and you need something to heal them. But I think the truth is a more wholesome conspiracy. I think that since the start of power-up foods in cartoons, people were looking for a way to make the target audience think fondly of healthy food. Seeing your favourite character eat healthily and get stronger, whether it's Mario’s mushrooms or Popeye’s spinach, you’ll believe the foods will be just as great for you. 

So next time your character grabs an apple to heal themselves two hearts. Thank our old friend Pacman, for setting the trend.

Genre-Savvy Grab Bag

Hi there and welcome to the Genre-Savvy Grab Bag! We're writers who like stories and what we're about are genre tropes. What is a genre trope? It's a repeating pattern, motif, theme, structure, and/or archetype across a genre or medium of storytelling.

Really, any storytelling feature can be a trope. The important thing is that to be a trope the feature is repeated across many works and by many authors in a genre or medium. Multiple tropes being put together in a certain way can define a genre or particular type of story. 

For example, what are the tropes of a superhero origin story? Classically, they're about a exceptional individuals living through an unresolved personal crisis that results in a tragedy leaving the hero isolated and spurred to action. Batman, Superman, Spiderman, and Daredevil all share the traits of a classic superhero origin story.

Being genre-savvy is recognizing when tropes are used. It's like understanding how buildings are built and what keeps them standing. A good story knows how to use, or not use, and subvert tropes to keep the audience interested and satisfied.

Good stories will use tropes and still leave the audience wondering what's coming next. Being genre-savvy means you might be able to recognize when a story is put together poorly. It also means you probably know why that story stands strong when it's good.

Every few weeks, our talented writers are going to hunt down tropes across numerous narrative mediums, from audio dramas to literature, and we're going to tell you about what we found. Where they are (or aren't?), how they worked (or didn't), and maybe even why they're satisfying (or decidedly not). See you there!