I’ve been thinking about a short story arc that happened in Star Wars : Clone Wars. It was that bit where Anakin and the others meet what are described as god-like avatars of the Force and Anakin had to prove himself as the Chosen One. It’s nice that the whole chosen one thing was elaborated on but the whole ark always felt really out of place to the rest of the show…

…The story suddenly went from a war that threatens the governments of this civilisation to the universe being at risk and then right back down to the war. They never mentioned it again (I think) and it didn’t seem to have any impact on the show, apart from making the war feel kinda Podunk to me.

It made me remember a few other long form stories that had the tension sucked out of them by a sudden, brief threat that was a lot worse than the main obstacle of the story. Like there was that crossover in the Fables comic where they confronted the writer of the universe who wanted to erase them all. Or basically any time Q showed up in Star Trek after Next Generation.

It’s a matter of scale. How is the audience supposed to be worried about say, a city being destroyed when your protagonist just took 15 minutes out to stop the world from exploding?

A lot of the time, they make sense from a character/universe development point of view. Like in Clone Wars, it was a quick way of demonstrating that Anakin and the force itself is (potentially inherently) unstable. That’s something really important to the larger themes of the show and needed to be looked at. But if the story has to be temporarily twisted into nonsense to get some point about the character or world across, then maybe some more development should have happened earlier on, or later, or generally in a more subtle way.

I get that a lot of it is meant as metaphor. It’s not always meant to fit into the world because it’s representative of an abstract concept. If that’s the case though then why is it in the world? Why are these actual events taking place and being presented as a functioning part of the established universe? Then to top it off, all the characters usually pretend it didn’t happen.

It’s like saying to the audience “yeh, what just happened was crazy important, not in regards to the story but still crazy important. No no, it was all canon but not in the way that has any impact on the events to follow. Keep it in mind though, just don’t mention it ever again.”

Come to think of it, it’s probably just a specific way the pacing of a story can go wrong. A lot of these examples probably would have worked really well if they’d happened towards the end of the story, when the stakes are already high.

I suspect that this is something that only happens in episodic stories with no set end in sight. It seems like this kind of earth-shaking, self-examination by the story could happen in a dream sequence or something.

I donno. I just don’t think they work as a narrative tool. There’s probably a specific term for them, like mid-season story bomb or reverse narrative pause. If you know what they’re called, let me know :)

(If there’s some extended piece of Star Wars lore that puts the Space Gods into better context, please don’t shout me down by explaining it at length. In the context of the show, it was a self-contained incident and completely disconnected from the story as a whole.)

Review: Fables #151

Review: Fables #151[Editor’s Note: This review may contain spoilers]
Writer: Bill WillinghamArt: Mark Buckingham and Steve LeialohaColors: Leigh LoughridgeLetters: Todd Klein
Reviewed by: Matthew B. Lloyd
Summary
“In which things continue more or less where we left off.”  Including, catching up with Snow and Bigby, meeting Jack in the Green for the first time and a couple of mysteries rear their…

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Quick Bigby

Diverse Literature Spotlight: La Princesa and the Pea

Author Susan Middleton Elya and illustrator Juana Martinez-Neal’s La Princesa and the Pea provides a fresh twist to the classic fairy tale and includes captivating and vibrant art inspired by the culture of Peru.

There’s a section in the Fables: Storybook Love paperback where the artist makes the fun choice to stop drawing Bigby’s eyes and mouth altogether it always catches me so off guard

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submitted by @tiptapricot​