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Isaac Young

Feb 15, 2024 • 7 tweets • 3 min read • Read on X

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Why the first Starship Troopers movie failed as a parody, a thread:

Watching the movie, it was clear the director was aiming for a campy, over-the-top depiction of the Terran Federation. Perhaps not an outright mockery, but certainly a drastic departure from the serious novel.

First, let's tackle a writing pitfall that irks Leftists to this day. If you make your characters naturally handsome, fit, and well-groomed, then it becomes increasingly difficult to properly mock them. Beauty is self-evident, and all the characters in ST are good looking.

This extends to the overall Terran Federation as well. We see clean, beautiful streets. Life seems good for Rico in his polite high school. This is a far cry from the crime ridden and drug addicted cities we know today. Where are the homeless encampments, the ghettos?

Can we nail the Terran Federation for being cruel? I guess. But when you play off cruelty as a joke, you are undermining your own message. This isn't a dialogue about the brutal conditions for training soldiers in a futuristic setting. This is a gag, and it's hilarious.

All right, what about a critique of comparison? Perhaps the enemies of the Terran Federation have a better system. Oh wait, no, they're bugs. I've seen people genuinely argue that the bugs are supposed to be sympathetic. But they're still bugs...

THIS is not a face I can relate to, sympathize for, or even have a dialogue with. This screams at me to kill it with fire. Even IF I didn't want to kill this thing, I want to be in orbit, far away from this creature. It's horrific, and only a contrarian can argue against that.

The only thing you can really critique about the Terran Federation is the propaganda and incompetence. But when everything is so slapstick, it fails at landing a serious point. These guys are badasses in a funny movie, not a warning about the dangers of fascism.

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More from @HariSel57511397

Isaac Young

@HariSel57511397

Mar 21

I was skimming an indie novel, and I was struck by how scenes with heavy action still bored me to death. Action is good, but action that reveals character is 100x better.

For example, go to Cowboy Bebop. The slippery way Spike fights tells the viewer everything about him. 1/

What separates the amateurs from the masters is to be able to do three or four things at once with the same scene. Action should usually be accompanied by an insight, an idea to underscore, or a new aspect of a character. This is why the fights in FMAB are immaculate. 2/

Some people enjoy fights because of mechanics, and I would argue this is another dimension to consider. But your ability to make these interesting is like trying to write a good detective story. Your goal is to do unexpected things within a constrained ruleset. 3/

Read 7 tweets

Isaac Young

@HariSel57511397

Mar 13

I believe that the future direction of the book industry is trending towards maximalist, highly detailed book covers. At least, for those indies who wish to remain competitive in an oversaturated market.

Here’s some tips on cover art and how to stand out from AI slop. /1

Here’s a cover I whipped up with AI until I can commission a proper one from an artist. It’s decent and it gets the proper vibe across.

However, there are a few problems. The guy has two hoods. The city has blurry details, and the picture gets worse the longer you squint. /2

Here’s the thing about AI. It can generate an image with two or three key ideas. Any more than that, and the generators flat out break. And even in good shots, you see tons of AI errors if you look long enough. And these generators can’t create images they aren’t trained on. /3

Read 9 tweets

Isaac Young

@HariSel57511397

Mar 11

Some thoughts on what I think destroys modern writers.

The first and foremost is that writers view their stories as an expression of a product and not vision. This leads writers to treat tropes and the fantastical as commodities at a store rather than artistic intent. 1/

This leads to rampant homogenization where every setting has elves and dwarves and a thousand kinds of dragon, but without anything really being said through the setting. You have authors writing 150 page histories, and it all feels the same. 2/

Which leads to my next point. Authors emphasize complexity as the highest virtue. Everyone loves to clown on Martin, but everyone still wants to write the next ASOIAF. Endless detail and history is anathema to storytelling—which is the concise presentation of detail. 3/

Read 9 tweets

Isaac Young

@HariSel57511397

Jan 9

An interesting trend @KingEmprPenguin noted was the rise of movies and television that were meta-commentaries on other stories. They only made sense when a person was inundated with all the tropes. Now I’m not saying this is bad in practice, in fact, Megamind is an example… 1/

of a story I quite like that falls in this category. But the whole hero stops being a hero and handing the city to the villain only makes sense where tropes exist independently of their bearing in reality. It only makes sense when heroes and villains are morally immaterial. /2

The tropes exist in-universe, and are roles that are filled by a cosmic order as larger than life figures larp as good guys and bad guys. Now Megamind is saved because it plays its real villain straight and doesn’t try to deconstruct everything. /3

Read 9 tweets

Isaac Young

@HariSel57511397

Dec 12, 2024

Indiana Jones was a product of its time. His ideals of putting the whole of human history in a museum could only spring up in liberal fantasy.

But history has not ended. The past is still alive, and these symbols move among us just as they did thousands of years ago.

The brilliance of Indiana Jones has always been the acknowledgement that the past has real power, and this creates a contradictory tug and pull as Indiana regularly encounters the supernatural, only to see it stuffed away at the final moment.

What’s the first movie’s answer to finding a “Conduit to God”? Shove it in a warehouse and hope science can rationalize it later. Ironically, the Nazis were more correct in their thinking, even though they got splattered. How long can something like that be locked away?

Read 9 tweets

Isaac Young

@HariSel57511397

Dec 11, 2024

Modern people have this really naive view of Christ’s Redemption of Mankind. They think it saves you from all earthly consequences, that as soon as you say the magic words, you instantly fix everything you broke in your life. /1

But that’s not how any of this works. You break something when you sin, and just because you “repent”, that doesn’t mean you’ll get it back. A man can’t undo an adultery anymore than a woman can’t reclaim her virginity. Thinking otherwise is pure cope, and frankly, immoral. /2

None of the Saints got an out of jail card with their redemption. They had to live with the consequences of their sins for the rest of their lives. You are not lost in the sense you can still attain heaven. But if you kill someone, you can’t take that back. /3

Read 8 tweets

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