What's a "Moral Compass Cricket Thingy"?

[Moonface]

Oh yeah, J.P. is definitely up there too although he at least cares to help Tommy at the start rather than just try to leave by himself. He remains my most disliked Frontier character though right now because of his insistence on hitting on Zoe. I prefer how he acts with her when he tries to retrieve her spirit from Grumblemon since at least then he acts like he cares about her without the thought of getting in her pants attached to it.

[Moonface]

Got this question in my head while driving today and having a QOTSA song come on from the "Songs for the Deaf" album, and it was one of the ones that have a lengthier radio style segment attached to the end and since I know you're a big QOTSA fan I wanted to ask: which radio sequence (if any) is your favourite from that album?

[Maniakkid25]

Honestly, I think most of them are annoying, but if I had a favorite, it would probably be either the ending of Song for the Deaf or the ending of the The Sky is Fallin'. Song for the Deaf doesn't take too long, and it feels like a good way to close out the album. Meanwhile, I actually find the segment at the end of Sky is Fallin' kinda funny. But honestly, as much as I appreciate a good concept, I just wish the radio segments were their own tracks, and not part of the actual song.

[Moonface]

Hmm, yeah I'd never really thought about the segments being better as their own short interlude tracks rather than being included in the actual songs, mostly because any time I listen to music it tends to be when driving and so the radio stuff never feels out of place because I just like to imagine I'm actually listening to music on the radio but without being subjected to songs I don't like. Personal reasoning aside though I don't think it'll ever get old for me when that one radio interlude happens where the host says "all death metal, all the time!" and then a song as far from that sound possible comes on after in my shuffle.
Thematically within the album I think my favorite of them all might be the one that plays before "God Is In The Radio" just for how it cycles through multiple stations trying to avoid religious talk but every station is doing it.

Since we're taking about interludes and you're not a huge fan of how that album does it, what interludes overall do you like best or is there a particular band/album that you think does them really well without having the intrusive problem "Songs For The Deaf" has?

[Maniakkid25]

I'm actually not a fan of interludes at all, musical or skit. I sort of have a immediate "Get on with it!" reaction to it. Eminem's Criminal and Boston's Foreplay are a couple I can think of that just get in the way of things. And Foreplay/Long Time is one of Boston's most beloved songs! It's the same problem I have with a lot of Metallica staples: you're taking too long to get to the point.

Now, granted, I have a caveat to this. One of my favorite songs, after all, is Timeshift by Subtech. That song stretches about 2 minutes of song into 13.5 minutes. But the difference here is that the repetition and droning on IS the point, not an interlude. Trance is a genre DEFINED by it's repetition of musical concepts to the point of banality. For what it's SUPPOSED to be, it's a great song. Meanwhile, For Whom the Bell Tolls by Metallica goes for 2 minutes before it finally gets to the verse riff! It would be fine as it's own track, like how Machinae Supremacy separate World of Light and Shinigami into two different tracks, despite the former being a lead-in to the later. But just make sure it's the point of the song.

[Moonface]

Yeah, I'm in the same boat with disliking bundled interludes or song openings that drag on. A song I always think of that annoys me with that is "Living is a Problem Because Everything Dies" by Biffy Clyro, which opens with 90 seconds of quiet ambience rudely interrupted with constant "DUN!" sounds; it makes me wish Spotify had the radio edit which drastically cuts that stuff down and goes right into the song instead. It's also one of the rare instances where I think a radio edit is better than the original because it strips off the fat.

I do wonder though, for a song like "For Whom The Bell Tolls" would the long opening part bother you as much if it were moved to somewhere in the middle of the song like a solo part? Or do solo style sections in the middle of songs bother you just as much if they don't add much to a song for you?

[Maniakkid25]

I think if they were spaced out between verses, it would be really interesting, with each verse having a new hook into it? But given the structure of that intro, it would require a large amount of restructuring. And plus, this isn't just a For Whom the Bell Tolls problem, but a Metallica problem. Even Master of Puppets, a song I really like, has an intro section that's overindulgent. It's a good song, but you could honestly cut out the opening riff, and skip straight to the pre-verse riff, and not much would be lost aside from a minute of build-up, which is what the pre-verse riff does anyway. And the fact that I can identify an "opening" and "pre-verse" riff before the vocals start is kind of my point.

As far as solos, they are usually fine as, again, they are part of the point of the song. Short solos help break up the song, and when an instrumental break happens for multiple minutes, it's again the point (are you listening to Dragonforce for the vocals, or the guitar work? Be honest). My usual rule of thumb is "if you're playing/doing something for more than 16 measures, there better be a point." 16 measures in 4/4 is so standard, even RAPPERS refer to their verses as their "16 bars", with "bars" being the alternative for "measure".

Basically, what I'm saying is what has been codified into all art ever: don't overstay your welcome. Stories? Rule of Three. Comedy? Set-up and Punchline. This is just my general rule for music.

[Moonface]

Basically, what I'm saying is what has been codified into all art ever: don't overstay your welcome. Stories? Rule of Three. Comedy? Set-up and Punchline. This is just my general rule for music.

Have you ever come across something in any medium that was successful in going beyond the Rule of Three?

[Maniakkid25]

[Insert TV Tropes link here]

No, really, at the bottom of the summary, they mention how things can come in 7s (see Halo), and 4s (like the elements). And then there's the eastern tradition of 108 things in a story (Suikoden famously plays off this). But usually, if you are writing a story, doing something in threes can rarely steer you wrong.

Generally, when you have a question involving the craft of storywriting, TV Tropes is a good place to look for it.

[Moonface]

Ah, my question was more about things that don't just do three entries to tell a story and instead tell that story over 4+ entries or add something extra on like say, Indy 4, so my bad on not wording it well because I overlooked that the Rule of Three isn't explicitly meaning "if you tell a story across more than 3 books/movies/games there's a higher chance you did it wrong". XD

[Maniakkid25]

...Chronicles of Narnia is across 7 books. The .hack video game was in 4 parts. Legend of Dragoon is 4 chapters, each one disk long. Those are the ones that immediately come to mind. However, there is a caveat. A small note I'd like to add: In my opinion, a story should be a self-contained unit that tells all it's information in that one tale alone, without me needed to have outside knowledge to understand what's happening. Now, what do I mean by "outside knowledge"? Marvel is a good way to illustrate this: Knowing who the characters are is not enough "outside knowledge" to lose sight of the story, but glossing over plot details that happened in earlier entries IS! So, the Avengers, and knowing who the various members are isn't directly explained in the movie, BUT the details you need to understand the plot that's happening (What happened to Loki and Thor, Bruce Banner's anger issues, stuff like that) is kept within the singular movie so that you understand exactly what's happening.

Put another way: The Original Modern Warfare 2. Knowing what happened in the first game helps set up the scenario, but "outside knowledge" would be if they skipped over the entire Gulag sequence and put that in a 200 page book explaining what happened. Given that the Gulag sequence has a direct link to the plot happening in America because it's the reason they get EMP'd, skipping over that part would be confusing!

[Moonface]

...Chronicles of Narnia is across 7 books. The .hack video game was in 4 parts. Legend of Dragoon is 4 chapters, each one disk long. Those are the ones that immediately come to mind.

Fair point. For some reason, I just blanked on all of the stories that use more than three books/movies/games to tell an overarching story, and only though of things that come in threes like Lord of the Rings, Star Wars (I view it as coming in trilogies that just happen to connect), Indiana Jones (movie 4 doesn't exist), etc.

Put another way: The Original Modern Warfare 2. Knowing what happened in the first game helps set up the scenario, but "outside knowledge" would be if they skipped over the entire Gulag sequence and put that in a 200 page book explaining what happened. Given that the Gulag sequence has a direct link to the plot happening in America because it's the reason they get EMP'd, skipping over that part would be confusing!

I know you dropped out of Destiny quite fast mainly due to its gameplay, but I get the feeling you would've really hated it for how it handles lore had you stuck with it because that game is one of the most notable I know of when it comes to having a lot of its lore dumped outside the game. If I'm recalling correctly, you collect things in-game but have to read the actual lore those things contain on the games website, rather than having the ability to read it in-game. I've seen that come up so often by players hating how you have to go outside of the game every time you grab a lore item if you want to actually read it, and how you can't read that lore on the website until you get the item so you either constantly go back and forth, or go to somewhere else that has all the lore in one spot (which is more efficient but still doesn't resolve the problem of the lore not being in-game but it gets unlocked in-game which is ridiculous).

[Maniakkid25]

That's the same exact thing I hate about Overwatch's lore, WTF! Funny enough, that's one of the few things Battleborn (may god rest its soul) did right compared to Overwatch: the lore is in game. Yeah, you have to complete challenges, but it's IN THE GAME!

[Moonface]

Oh, Overwatch didn't have most of the main lore in the game? I always thought it did because doesn't it have character bios that tell you the background of a character, or am I remembering wrong?

Thinking of games that hide their lore slightly, DbD takes on this weird middle ground with it by having base lore just there on a character to read freely, but then extra lore sometimes comes out and it gets put into the tomes where you can't read it unless you complete the challenge to unlock it. It's not crucial stuff but it is still lore and I'm curious what your thought is on games that put extra bonus lore like that in that is only accessible under certain conditions?

[Maniakkid25]

You ARE remembering wrong; they have a blurb describing the character, but that's it. The only other lore we get are in special events and random tidbits of dialogue we get when certain characters play together and the game deigns to give them a line.

Bonus lore is fine as long as it's not crucial to the story. My baseline example is Star Ocean. Star Ocean has a dictionary that gives you overviews of vocabulary, but the game itself explains enough of itself that you don't have to know everything in the dictionary to be able to follow what the story entails. So, if you want to know, say, the reason there's a new year system and when it started, that's in the dictionary, but you don't NEED that information to understand the story.