Incorrect. What was in previous Smash games was a set-up. NOT a narrative. Not even an "incredibly light narrative." There were blank, empty cut-scenes that functioned as fancy loading screens to introduce the next fight in a flashy way. There was no threaded story being told. There was no character development. There were just fancy transitions between fights.
Anything that describes events, real or fictional, is a narrative.
Whether they have little substance or not does not change this fact.
It describes events, albeit, with no depth or character development, but still, that's a narrative.
Brawl's cut-scenes are going to be just as empty as the previous games. They're still going to be loading screens disguised as "transitions." The opening cinema to the game is still just a fancy way of starting the game. Nothing more. There is still going to be no narrative. Simple, light, or otherwise.
You seem to be redefining narrative to have some basis in quality...
Why are you hiding behind this meandering pedantic “philosophical” rationalization? Because if you want to get really “heady” here, you have a point to prove just as much as I do. Why? Because for this discussion, Brawl is neither “consistent” nor “inconsistent” until one of us can supply suitable evidence either way. If there is no discussion engaged in by both sides, the subject is blank, because no consensus has been reached. After all, the ultimate goal of this discussion is to decide whether Brawl is internally consistent or inconsistent. Therefore, at the beginning of the discussion, neither can truly claim it to be either. Therefore, you have absolutely no logical grounds on which to stand to state Brawl is consistent until proven otherwise. So if you want to continue to pull this “Well I don’t have anything to prove here but you do” schlock, there’s no doubt in my mind that you are just playing philosopher here rather than being a philosopher. Because any self-respecting philosophy student would be more than willing to engage in such a debate where they are also actively trying to prove a point. So my question to you is…would you care to try again?
You seem to be missing the point...
Internal inconsistency is based on CONTRADICTIONS. LACK THEREOF means that something is internally consistent.
You seem dead-set on defining everything based on quality, but seem unwilling to grant any of the accepted attributes that define when something has quality. And then you've defined quality as "not fanfiction" since being fanfiction is the only criteria you've given for being bad.
What is wrong with this picture? How the hell do you analyze works? Do you toss them into little bins saying, "fan-fiction" and "not-fanfiction" and then cart off all of the former to be used in schools with the latter being sent to the dumpster.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think there's something more to literary analysis.
Remember, though. Those other two items were still from Ocarina of Time, my little green friend. Therefore, Smash Bros was still externally consistent with its template game. You have yet to satisfactorily prove anything.
The fact that they were from ocarina of time doesn't make them externally consistent.
Would Link suddenly turning into Gannondorf be consistent with the source material, I mean, they're both from Ocarina of Time, right?
Sure, they're the same person (Link and Young Link), but that doesn't mean that you can keep something that's age specific as an eternal feature of the character? Do you still play with teething rings? No, I don't think so.
So those items were age specific, by allowing both to use one, they violated OoT's consistency.
When the "source character" didn't use X item in the source game, that item was still modeled after an item in the source game (silver arrows, fire arrows, boomerang, hookshot, etc). Therefore, Smash Bros was still consistent with the template game. Furthermore, you have yet to satisfactorily prove anything.
It's inconsistent with the CHARACTER, not the item, the character.
Then if you’re letting bias seep into this discussion to where you’re incorrectly attributing items to particular games in a franchise, I question how fair you can be to the rest of this discussion. Accuse me of ad hominem if you must, but we all know that accusing someone of using ad hominem is just yet another meandering, pedantic “philosophical” safety net. Regarding “they weren’t in OoT” remember that even though silver arrows debuted in the original Legend of Zelda, they were still given an Ocarina of Time re-vision. Therefore, Ocarina of Time was still the template game for Link in Smash Bros Melee.
*Possible Spoilers*
It's not incorrect attribution, unless you decided to skip dragging that gigantic bomb to the Temple you would've come across the silver arrows in A Link to the Past, they simply didn't debute there, and I never pretended they did, i simply mentioned that they were in Link to the Past.
*end possible spoilers*
As for ad hominem... learn some basic rhetoric, Ad Hominem fallacies are distractions committed by one of the parties in the debate in order to win by making something irrelevant seem relevant. If you think that randomly throwing irrelevant topics out as if they had some meaning to the question at hand, then I guess there's not much of a point of discussing things with you.
And as I've noticed, you do LOVE your distractions.
As for the silver hours, how does that change things, we have already established that one attribute, the overall look of the character, was OoT, thus whatever the source material they should be harmonized in the interests of asthetics.
This is a fighting game. In fighting games, it’s not at all a “common technique” to give the player the choice of FOUR or more characters to “do something.” In fighting games, you select your solitary fighter at the character select screen and play with that character throughout the single-player mode. You can select a new character only after a game-over. Smash Bros is a fighting game, first and foremost. Therefore, throwing four different team combinations at you at random intervals in the game, after you’ve chosen a character at the beginning of the game, is illogical and inconsistent with Smash Bros’ fighting game foundation.
Genre classifications do not make something internally inconsistent.
The game does not establish as it's rules that it's following all the traditions of fighting games. In fact, from the very beginning smash was never a traditional fighting game.
Internal inconsistency is conflicts with it's own rules, not the rest of the games in it's category.
How was it consistent with itself?
By lacking contradictions, it's that simple.
Anything that has no contradictions is consistent with it.
Internal consistency, how? How was it internally consistent? Only because Smash Bros ignored external narratives? That’s a flimsy argument. You said, “Brawl [made an internally consistent cross-over] by establishing from the beginning that the narratives that the characters came from are not related to brawl.” Anyone would read that and see you making the connection between “ignoring external narratives” and “establishing internal narratives,” as if “ignoring external narratives” was the cause, and “establishing internal narratives” was the effect. Keep in mind that the only way to create internal consistency in this case is through establishing an internal narrative. And the only way to establish an internal narrative in a cross-over fighting game like Smash Bros is to ignore external narratives. This is no Straw-Man Fallacy I’m using. I’m pointing out how you’re trying to dance around gaps in your own “logic.”
Again, you are being far too strict in your definition of narrative.
It establishes it's narrative through cutscenes and battles, and in part of establishing it's narrative it explained why the external narratives bear no relevance.
Now, furthermore, is there an actual internal narrative established in Smash Bros? You point to book-end cut-scene introductions and transitions as what you presume to be the internal narrative. However, is there an actual narrative present at all? Is there a clear persistent commentary in Smash Bros? Is there a clear story? Are there clear plot complications? The answer to these questions is a clear, resounding “NO.” The “narrative” you point to is nothing more than a series of cut-scenes and transitions designed to introduce the game and fights in a dynamic and interesting way.
Again, narrative is just detailing of events, real or fictional.
What events? The chosen character fights the master hand, that's an event, it's presentation is a narrative or part of a narrative.
The lack of plot complications and other similar devices add to the narrative, but they are not required for one to exist.
Again, you are confusing a GOOD NARRATIVE with a NARRATIVE.
So, based on your original assessment, is Smash Bros internally consistent? The answer is very clearly NO, because even though Smash Bros ignores external narratives, it never establishes an internal narrative of its own, and therefore is never internally consistent, because it has no internal fundamental foundation with which to remain consistent.
Again, confusing good narrative with narrative. There is a detailing of events, obviously with very little background information, but that means it's a bad narrative, not that it's inconsistent.
Lack of substance doesn't prove inconsistency, inconsistency only exists when there is a direct contradiction, and consistency exists where there is nothing.
Define “unrelated book.” It’s a vague term and you as a philosophy student should know better than to use such a lousy phrase. Regarding your views on Smash’s “internal narrative”…there is no “internal narrative” in Smash Bros.
In other words, not a fanfiction of that work or anything else which directly utilizes the source material. It wasn't lousy, it was intended so it could refer to a wide variety of different things.
First, the very idea of “suspension of disbelief” relates to an active decision. In fact, “suspension of disbelief” does not even exist. It is half-a-phrase used by people who genuinely do not understand the dynamics of the principle. Because your disbelief cannot suspend itself. Suspending anything requires an agent to perform the action of suspension. But in “suspension of disbelief” there is nothing, whether explicit or implicit, to perform the act of suspending the disbelief. And for that matter, whose disbelief? Why would the disbelief be suspended? Who is performing the suspending? None of those questions are answered when you use “suspension of disbelief.” “Suspension of disbelief” is an empty phrase. It means nothing. At all. So stop using it.
"suspending" means to stop temporarily, inattention can cause one to stop doing something just as easily as an active effort. If one suspends pulling on a rope because they saw something shiny and wanted to pick it up, they did not intend to stop pulling on the rope, they intended to do something else, hence a suspension not directly willed. It still has an agent, but that doesn't mean it must be willing.
Ah yes, so who decided this, because I know a fair number of academics who love the term.
You may have decided that the term means nothing, but to academia it means something, so, how about not?
Second, there is either a “willing suspension of disbelief” or nothing at all. There is either an active decision on the part of the will of the reader to ignore clumsy writing and non-organic characterization, or the story is simply that good to where the reader is never questioning the author’s choices. When you use “willing suspension of disbelief,” all of the previous questions are answered. Who is suspending the disbelief? A conscious observer with an independent mind who is now actively evaluating the story in question. Whose disbelief is being suspended? The conscious observer. Why is the disbelief being suspended? Because the conscious observer has willingly made a decision to suspend his or her disbelief after evaluating what he or she has read. That process may happen faster than you realize, but it’s a conscious, active decision.
When the observer reads a story that is very well-written and doesn't have to do it actively, it is still suspension of disbelief. That same person is still suspending disbelief, actions made through inattention (or in this case, a lack of an action) are still actions.
There is never any “passive suspension of disbelief”, because believing and not believing, as they relate to this point, are active decisions. You decide if you will either believe or not believe a premise. And you will only have to make that active decision if the writer is terrible. But if the author conveys the world and characters in an organic manner, there is never a question of how believable the premise is, and therefore, there is never a “WILLING suspension of disbelief” and BELIEF itself never becomes a factor.
I'll bet you there are all of 26 people who believe the premise of Harry Potter, yet when reading the book, they do not question, they suspend their disbelief by inattention to the fact that this cannot happen in the real world.
Either way, this is completely irrelevant because you know what I mean, I have explained exactly what I meant by suspension of disbelief, and further discussion about whether it is the correct term is patently irrelevant to the topic at hand.
That said, I will provide a source for my definition:
http://www.mediacollege.com/glossary/s/suspension-of-disbelief.html
Now to illustrate my point, let’s talk about Slaughterhouse Five, even though you obviously haven’t actually sat down and examined it, since you just said Billy Pilgrim was time-traveling (hint: PTSD). There’s a huge tidbit buried in the book that doesn’t become apparent until you re-read it quite a few times and then start critically analyzing the book. But we’ll hold off on that now.
When reading the book you have to deal with time-traveling, that if where one suspends one's belief.
Audience simply withholds inactively (with some exceptions) their judgement about whether this can happen, the actual mechanics behind the time-traveling aren't really relevant to this fact.
Like with the Silver arrows you assumed that I didn't know something because I chose to present only the relevant information, instead of providing an examination of the entire thing.
It's called jumping to conclusions, and that seems to be an extercise in this.
When we read Slaughterhouse Five, was there ever an active decision to willingly suspend our disbelief? Within the first two chapters, did we ever actively doubt the reality that Vonnegut had created? Did we ever not believe that Billy Pilgrim was jumping around his life? Why do you think we never had any doubts? Because of Vonnegut’s delivery. Because of his finesse. Because of Vonnegut writing a truly organic, engaging, and original character who was living in a world that Vonnegut described to the perfect detail and made it real. Billy Pilgrim wasn’t a character we had seen forty times over in multiple franchises. We had no idea going in who Billy Pilgrim was, or what he did, or where he went. There was no pre-existing knowledge of him. And Vonnegut knew that. He knew who Billy was. He knew what he did. He knew where he went. Vonnegut was a ****ing genius, dude.
Again, not the point... You are continuing to confuse the quality of the work with it's existence.
So when I see you making exceptions for quality and originality, just to claim that fan-fiction “is no different from any other work of the medium” I honestly see someone who is just making stuff up at this point, and getting further and further from any kind of rational point of view. And then when you accused me of “misconstruing” your argument, I had a nice laugh, because even if I were to pitch your argument verbatim to any English teacher—or really anyone with any kind of literary training, they’d laugh and say that’s one of the most bat-**** crazy, stupid, and downright asinine things they’d ever heard. I was pulling a Straw Man Fallacy? Hardly. I was just outright calling your assessment the ill-informed steaming pile of dung that it actually was.
Except I never said that fanfiction was no different from any other work of the medium, I said that it is poorer in quality in general, and pretty much stated that you pointed out why this is true.
Simply put, THERE IS A REASON WHY FANFICTION IS BAD.
Fanfiction isn't bad simply because it's fanfiction (though the vast majority of fanfiction is horrible, this isn't the root cause of the issue). You could use that kind of logic to justify decrying any genre.
Fanfiction is bad because it makes large numbers of elementary mistakes in it's style. You already named a few, inconsistent, lacking in originality, requiring conscious suspension of disbelief, little or poor character development, etc. That's WHY fanfiction in general is poor, because it's writers make mistakes.
The universe did not one day decide that all works categorized under "fanfiction" are inherently bad, the writers commonly make errors, and this was my point from the very beginning.
Were these errors not made however, fanfiction COULD be good. I'm doubting a fanfiction will ever become a great literary classic, but if it's authors did not make so many elementary mistakes then, you never know.
As a final thought: As far as literary analysis goes, I don't think we disagree conceptually, as far as I can tell, this is an issue of defining terms, we're used to using different terms or applying more open or limited definitions to terms, as such, if we can agree on terms, I think the only substance of our disagreement will be the Sheik argument.