Examining Deaths in Star Wars

I've seen some posts talking about writing death scenes. Some tips sound good like, go ahead if it advances the plot or motivates others. These are good things to keep in mind, but I think perhaps most important is this: the death needs to have the emotional weight corresponding to the audience's investment in the character. To explore this idea, let's look at some deaths in Star Wars. Good and Bad ones. (Obviously spoiler alert for various Star Wars movies) Let's start with a good example. What was our investment in Obi-Wan Kenobi in the original Star Wars movie? When he dies, Luke shouts out "No!" which was an appropriate response for him. However, the audience's reaction was not like Luke's in this scene. Instead, we are more like Darth Vader because our investment in Obi-Wan was in his mystery. His death scene corresponds perfectly to this investment as not only are his final words mysterious, but then he disappears! Darth Vader is confused like we are. This is further reinforced when we hear Obi-Wan speak to Luke in the final scenes. To be fair, if we watched the prequel trilogy first, we might have different emotions, but for storytelling, the way it was done in the original movie was good. Now let's compare with a bad example. Han Solo in The Force Awakens. What is our investment of the character? Not that of a father, and the movie does nothing to seriously reconcile that issue as it tries to make him a mentor instead. However, we were already heavily invested in him as a war hero and a friend. It would be more fitting for him to go down either in a ship in action, or as someone saving someone we know he is close to. Since there was no investment in the relationship with his son, his death did not carry the right weight. Even if it was saving Rey or Finn, that would have worked. But for him to try to emotionally save his son that he spent no time with on screen? No. And it did not help that his death was telegraphed for so long, filling the audience more with dread than with the proper emotion. Finally, let's look at Luke in The Last Jedi. This one the audience probably expected due to The Force Awakens, but it was beautifully done. Sure, we would have liked to see Luke be an epic action star, but what was our real investment in the character both throughout the series and in the movie? He was not a great lightsaber duelist but more like a pacifist. Instead we wanted to see him restore the Jedi order. While we did not see that directly, we see him show off an awesome new force technique and restore hope. Not only that, but his death scene mirrors one of the first scenes we see him in, including the beautiful music. We see him in peace after seeing him suffer for so long. Finally, he vanishes like his mentor (Did you notice the lightsaber strike being roughly the same position as well?). While we would have liked to see more from him alive, his death as a Jedi was perfectly fitting. I hope that helps with better understanding how to write good death scenes. It has at least helped me finally understand why I hated The Force Awakens death scene but loved The Last Jedi's ending. It also has provided me some new things to seriously consider when writing the death scenes for Neostriker. J. D. Nyle

Plan for Neostriker Sabre

Happy New Year!

Over the course of the New Year holidays, I published my short story Intent to Join on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited. It's approximately a 30 minute read and only $1. While it's not the first story I wrote for SABRE, it was one that I felt like was in good shape and a good story that would convey my intentions for the series. (Sample with first scene below)


SABRE is indeed set after Neostriker: Shining, but I'm also trying to make it not necessary to read the novel. This is helped by the facts that the main cast is not the same and it's set in the future.

One thing I wanted to do with Shining is to make each episode like an episode of the TV shows I grew up watching. Arguably this was before arcs started to be a main thing. What I liked was this meant each episode pretty much stood on its own with only a quick explanation about maybe an event or character required. This was also important because I would miss a lot of episodes and reruns were not always in order. At the same time, I liked being able to know which episode I liked so that I could re-watch it as much as I liked. As my son has been watching Thomas and Friends, I have greatly grown to appreciate this stand-alone structure more.

In the end, I made partial success in my goal for Shining. Each episode was pretty much unique and could be enjoyed at least partially if not mostly on its own. This is in part because Shining is a complete story and a novel. SABRE, on the other hand, was always intended to be serialized like Sherlock Holmes stories. I did plan a couple of novels to bookend SABRE, but I think I'll toss that out. As a result, SABRE may resemble more like Detective Conan where many episodes and cases are stand-alone, but there are a few arcs scattered around.

Now let me explain the tone idea I have for SABRE. The way I view Shining is that it's like the original Star Wars movie. It's mostly light-hearted and fun, establishes the core of Neostriker, and I think can be enjoyed by a large age range. My youngest reader was in middle school and oldest non-biased reader is late-twenties/early thirties. If it was animated or in comic form, I think even 4 year-olds would have fun, just like they would with the original Digimon series.

In contrast, I intend SABRE to be more like Empire Strikes Back and the 90's Batman the Animated Series and the Spectacular Spider-man TV series. What I hope this means is that it can be enjoyed by younger audiences, but I also don't intend to talk down. Occasionally there may be a dark scene or episode that covers more mature topics, but I plan for the stories to be more of platforms for allowing kids to talk to their parents about them and potentially propose a solution to dealing with an issue. To that end, I think Intent to Join is a fair representation of how I plan to go about.

I hope you take a look at Intent to Join and enjoy it. I'm also trying out a few new things and storytelling tactics so I would love to get some feedback. And if you enjoy that, I hope you would also take a look at Neostriker: Shining.

Dream on!

J. D. Nyle

What is Neostriker

What if combat was based off the combatants' spirits? This is the core of Neostriker.

Neostriker is a series where combatants wear an armor-representation of their spirit. As a result, this creates a dynamic where the fights are generally for art and fun while the story may focus on character growth or be philosophical.

How this dynamic plays out is based off the story. For example, in Neostriker: Shining, it is primarily for fun but ideas and light discussions are naturally woven throughout the story such as why men may refuse fighting women.

If I were to place it in a genre, I guess since I would classify Digimon and superhero comics as fantasy, Neostriker would be fantasy as well. You may not see elves, wizards, orcs, etc., but there are elements of fantasy such as special powers, monsters, and idealogies.

Core to the philosophy of the Neostriker stories is promoting good such as honor, respect, friendship, justice, and love. At the same time, I will try my best to not dehumanize my villains who are also human. Since Neostriker is about inner growth, my evil archetypes can simply be evil spirits which means I have flexibility to focus that the human "oppositions" have more complex motives that can still be clearly wrong, but understandable.

I hope to have your support as I write these stories. I foresee it will be a long journey, but I hope that not only will we have fun and enjoy the results, but also that we will grow to be better human beings. These are the kind of stories I would like my children to enjoy.

Dream on!
J. D. Nyle

eBook version coming soon!

Greetings!

I am pleased to announce that it looks like Neostriker: Shining will be able to get a kindle version after all! While there are some complications, it looks doable and possibly can release within the month. This will be great since it also opens the possibility of reaching markets beyond what I had access to before.

It's a bit confusing for me, but what this means is a few things. First, the earlier draft I had uploaded four years ago needed to be taken down, though the first chapter can still be available. This is to satisfy the exclusivity requirements. Second, the cover I used for the printed copy wasn't compatible for Kindle so there is a difference in covers.

Now for pricing: I currently intend to hold at the target $10 price as promised before. However, to celebrate the launch, I intend to discount it to $7 for a period of time. At the same time, from how I understand the model, I'll also make the eBook version free for those who buy the physical copy for a while. I hope this action also works retroactively and allows those who bought the printed copy within the last year to also redeem a free kindle version.

I hope you all will use this opportunity to read my novel.

Dream On!
J. D. Nyle

What Neostriker is about

What is Neostriker about? It's been awhile since I last posted an update concerning the stories, but I just got inspired for my next story after watching the first episode of 24. I don't know when I will get to write it, but I think it'd be good to address a topic that it may raise.

The theme of this story would be peer pressure. While I will likely write multiple stories on this topic, in this case I want to cover where sexual attraction is a main force. However, this will mean that the main fight will end up being between a boy and a girl, something seemingly in our media culture only allowed if the girl wins. My guess for this restriction is prevent violence against women. This topic is briefly addressed in Shining as the theme for one episode and that is where I think we can see established what Neostriker is about.

In that episode, David said he would not fight a girl but duels Emily anyway. When asked about this, he says that it's okay due to the nature of Neostriker. That nature is that Neostriker is not about violence. The combat is for art and fun and where injury is very uncommon, but the underlying nature of Neostriker is spirit, particularly in the realm of logic and ideals. The focus is not to care about the gender of the combatants, but rather the debates they have or the inner growth of a character. When it comes to the rules of philosophical debates, gender plays no role and that is what David was referring to. I certainly oppose violence against women, but since the underlying focus of Neostriker is on debate and ideals, there is no reason to segregate.

Neostriker was of course originally developed with an action mindset, but like all good things, it grew to have depth as well, similar to the TV shows, movies, and games that inspired it. The action and character design were hooks, but there was real value to glean as well. I hope that Neostriker is seen that way as well, especially in the realm of heroes. It should always promote good values and propose how to properly deal with some situations. I have learned that this is important when there came a trial for me, but I was inspired to make the good choice by David in a similar situation I had in my earlier drafts.

As far as I can recall, Neostriker has almost always had philosophical elements to it. And once I decided that the central force of Neostriker was spirit, it began to take center stage. Shining was the turning point where the action and philosophy were about equal in content though arguably slightly more on the philosophical side. And even though I don't plan to include a story in the game I'm working on, a driving force of it is the philosophical idea that games should be fun and not frustrating, as opposed to many mobile games where they frustrate to the point you might pay. 

I hope this blog post helps explain my ideals behind Neostriker and I certainly hope to have your support in growing it.

Dream on!

J. D. Nyle

September Update

I've decided to take another chance in making a Neostriker game. I've had a concept for a tactical game for a few years, by few, I mean perhaps 14 years. Yes, the game concept greatly predates Shining as it's based off a board game I designed to allow my friends and me to play Neostriker when we could not play outside. The concept has evolved, but the base is the same.

Part of what took so long was the search for a game engine. The most popular ones for Indies seem to be Unity and Unreal engine. However, I found programming a 2D tactical game for them to be too difficult for my level of experience. I took a look at RPG maker, but it looked too tedious and would require a lot of heavy customization. Things changed though when I heard the news of Nintendo Switch supporting Gamemaker Studio. I read reviews on Steam of the engine and saw some saying the community support was strong. I then opened YouTube and found Sergeant Indie's tutorial series. While my game will still require a lot of changes, the base he presented was what I needed to get started.

That being said, I have a few intentions for how I want to design this game.
1) Be easily replayable.
2) Keep grinding to a minimum.
3) Allow for player freedom and customization
4) Hide a few secrets
5) Allow for enjoyment of discovering mechanics

At the moment, I do not expect to have great graphics and music as my budget is pretty low and I'm already spending a bit with little prospect of getting a return. I'll try my best at providing what I can, but my hope is that the gameplay will be good enough to obtain funding to polish up, add multiplayer, and support consoles.

There is certainly a lot of work ahead of me, but I look forward it. Creating, when you have the right tools, is fun and so is the result. I hope you will enjoy the result of my work.

Dream on,
J. D. Nyle

P.s. if you are interested in learning about turn-based strategy and an intro into GameMaker Studio, I highly recommend Sergeant Indie's series. If you just want to learn about pathfinding, he has a video on that in the series https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFAuv8mcArkU5QeQv6qec5BKbZYdaWBjb

Does the Lord of the Rings promote Magic?

While I wait for more feedback on my latest short story Intent to Join (which is viewable on wattpad at the moment), I wrote a small thought piece after seeing people ask why some people give Tolkien and C. S. Lewis a pass on magic, but not other authors. This is my theory on the answer by looking at the One Ring

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If there is one thing people like to play with the most in storytelling, I'd wager it is magic. It's a fascinating subject, but if not handled properly, can lead to questionable morals. And as we cannot discuss magic in storytelling without bringing up Tolkien, whom many authors credit for inspiration, it would be good to analyze what his thoughts were.

Tolkien can be a bit confusing since he appears to use magic everywhere. It's even acknowledged in the Fellowship of the Ring when the hobbits meet with some elves. In this case, it's probably best to say he applied it to whatever could not be comprehended from a purely human and real world perspective. However, if we consider the reasons why magic is evil (grasping, evil source, and possession), then we can reason that he did indeed consider that magic to be evil. And this is all exemplified by the One Ring.

Grasping

To assume the One Ring only makes its wearer invisible is a critical misunderstanding. Instead, it was an amplifier. This is how everyone saw it and responded to it. Everyone who wanted the Ring was grasping for power. Even it's crafting was for the thirst of power. That is why it was given to the weak for safe-keeping.

Recall that Sauron was not invisible when he wore the Ring, but he became more powerful. Hobbits, on the other hand, were described as naturally good at hiding, so invisibility is an amplification of that power. So rather than just an invisibility tool, it's rather an amplifier.

Power source
To assume the One Ring is simply a tool that can be used and mastered by anyone would make the Lord of the Rings books confusing. Why not simply give it to the noblest and purest of heart?

Gandalf gives a brief statement that he could not accept the Ring even though he would initially desire to use it for good. He warned that with the Ring he would become possibly even worse than Sauron. And yet it is said he also bears one of the other rings while being a powerful wizard. To us, those would be two characteristics of magic and power. Why the discrimination? The answer is that his sources of power were good, but the Ring was forged by evil and was evil itself.

Possession

Recall that the Ring is not just a Ring, but it was in fact Sauron. The magic part of the magic ring is arguably that it was Sauron. Sauron had poured his essence into the Ring. Therefore anyone who used the Ring was actually using Sauron for power. When considering the idea that Sauron was essentially the devil, this is the textbook case of magic. And at the same time, the longer one had the Ring, the more susceptible to evil they became. We can even argue the character of Gollum to be a case of possession rather than split personality, but that's would be a separate debate.


Conclusion

Tolkien may have a variety of magic in his books, but he does present the core ideas of magic as evil. Grasping for power is evil; Power sourced from evil is also evil, even if the intent is good; It is evil to allow possession by evil. These ideas are perfectly portrayed in the One Ring as it is not only a symbol of evil, but also of magic.

J. D. Nyle


Disclaimer: My knowledge of Lord of the Rings comes mostly from watching the films and reading the books and attending a class on the subject. I am not Christopher Tolkien or Stephen Colbert and must defer to their expertise if they say otherwise.