[Spoilers] Why Zenos is the most important character moving forward

[Jaywalker]

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The standard of even employing a test like the Bechdel test as a requirement, for anyone, is nonsense. Having two women in a movie isn't inherently a problem. Having two men in a movie isn't inherently a problem. If there are two movies about women or made by women when more women than that are capable and interested in making movies, that's a problem. Derailing conversations and plots from what they otherwise might have been focusing on just so you can tell everyone you passed the Bechdel test is ridiculous and does a disservice to the work. The idea that female characters who are otherwise fully fleshed out and well-developed are somehow diminished because they didn't talk to each other about something other than a man is absolutely sexist. Men who are under those same circumstances in reverse, Star Wars or otherwise, would not be considered diminished in that manner. As a basic observation of how much something does or doesn't happen without judgment it's fine, but the number of people who use it that way is minuscule.

I think it's funny you assume I find Star Wars to be high quality and I think it's hysterical that you think you are in the slightest position to talk about objective correctness when you didn't read the words I wrote or even your own post.

Quotas would be brought up in instances where people are voicing complaints about how many of X or Y demographic appear in a piece of media. Which you did, even in your reply, citing two women in A New Hope. A well-written story does not need to force women into a story where it doesn't make sense for them to be or in a capacity that derails from the story. Same for men. Same for anyone. I personally don't think Star Wars is particularly well done. It's a very archetypal story and resonates with a lot of people successfully because of that. It doesn't do anything particularly complicated or groundbreaking, it has issues with how it references Asian cultures throughout, and it's somewhat limited in approach. It's fine for what it is, but certainly not technical mastery.

Lol you're not talking to the chef and you're not getting cockroaches. You're literally doing the equivalent of complaining that you don't like your perfectly executed soufflé to a professional food critic as a random customer who likes desserts but has never had a soufflé and certainly doesn't know how to make them. Anyone can give a critique but if your critique is uninformed and demonstrates an absolute lack of awareness, you deserve to be called on that. It has nothing to do with credentials or identity politics. I mentioned my experience because I was talking objectively, and I wanted to let you know that it was because I have a weird background most people are very unlikely to have. It is a dramatically different situation than it would have been if I didn't have that. I literally invited more challenges and questions because I wanted to show that regardless it's important to go on merit of arguments and explore a lot of options.

What I had been trying to tell you gently before was that you are coming across as inexperienced and are talking to someone who has moved well past what you're doing and has managed to use that to get a position of some rank through the merit of my work. This is my job, which I earned over a long period of time after extensive study that covered and went beyond the points you're referencing.

I do understand the approach you're using. Part of why I've bothered trying to explain this is because I also understand why it's wrong. At first I seriously wanted to help you as someone who's been there, and as someone who's seen professionals just get mean in situations like this. At this point, because you've been rude repeatedly and don't seem to have the humility to recognize your likes and dislikes are not objective, I'm just addressing the points in case it helps someone else. After that I plan to turn in.

For what it's worth, there's more for me to learn too. I learn important things on the job every day, from all kinds of people. I don't expect this to stop anytime soon. I also know what knowledge I've established as solid, how, and why. And I know from having gone through this that what you're proposing does not work and offers a scope that is neither broad nor deep enough to be truly effective.

You have zero grasp of how standards of quality shift according to the tradition and purpose of a work, and with your comment on Paradise Lost versus bodice rippers have just demonstrated that you are in fact a one trick pony. And more than that, you're unfortunately the kind of one trick pony who is too inflexible to perform a really unique or impressive trick.

You can have an objective set of criteria that is employed for wish-fulfillment. You can have an objective set of criteria used for literary fiction, and a different set for upmarket, and another set for commercial. All of these subcategories can also be applied to things like Science Fiction, Fantasy, Romance, Women's Fiction, Historical Drama, Thrillers, Horror, the works. There needs to be an in-depth understanding of each category and how they operate in order to effectively gauge how successful a work is within that category. To judge a piece that draws from wish-fulfillment on how well it builds empathy and literary technique is stupid. It misses the entire point of works in that vein while acting to homogenize the way stories are evaluated in a manner that is uninformative and ultimately ineffective.

Again, laughing because of course there's a story for Zenos. The way he finds his next worthy opponent is by creating more strife to inspire others to rise against him the way the Warrior of Light did. He's hardly going to stop moving just because the role is empty again. If anything, succeeding once is likely to encourage him to keep going with his methods because clearly something went right. And the Scions getting involved would be because they would never sit back and let Zenos continue wreaking havoc that way, even if none of them are worthy in his eyes.

Grynewaht was motivated by anger, frustration, and a desire to prove himself in the eyes of others as someone who was treated with disrespect constantly. He took it to a point of extreme self-mutilation that ultimately ended in death. The self-mutilation parallels with Zenos' suicide, but not only is Zenos' status and indifference to the opinions of others a huge difference (note that it doesn't matter what answer is given to his invitation to while away the hours together, which is specifically because you're not a person to him so much as a role)--it's also extremely significant that he kills himself because he has never worked so hard or exerted so much power in his life only to have his opponent endure everything and win. He has meaning and direction, and can't imagine being happier or pushing harder than he had in that moment. He gave everything he had and wanted to end with that feeling forever.

One death was despair, the other was triumph.

There is an extremely famous and critically acclaimed story by I believe Proust, about a man rolling over in bed. There's another story by Kafka that was highly experimental and again, critically acclaimed, about a small burrowing creature. No other living things exist in that story. It is absolutely possible to tell a story about a character doing nothing well. You just probably wouldn't like it.

Antagonist committing suicide would fail your test but tell a powerful story about human despair. Ending the story with the suicide does not mean the story no longer works or that the villain is an ineffective character. Likewise, if the other route is taken and the villain tries to kidnap more people there is still room for a story to be told. Clearly you've never seen Psycho if you don't think there's a story to be told where the protagonist is murdered by a serial killer lol.

There is too much to be said about Amazing Spider-Man 2. What I'll leave that point at is that Electro was never the reason that movie struggled.

There wasn't even a single protagonist in Game of Thrones and it's silly to argue as such. It is a massive fixture that the plot operates through multiple protagonists.

Reread. Personal weakness is not physical and this is no red herring, you just weren't paying attention.

You are too narrow-minded and surface-level to have a realistic grasp on what would be an effective objective evaluation of storytelling technique. You think it's a shame I pointed out spots your subjectivity is showing, I think it's a shame you've cut yourself off at the knees like this.