CapCaverna
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Realist, 'Realism' and Cool.
🕑 Added 2025-11-09 07:45:54 +0000 UTCI'm not really sure if anybody is gonna want to read this, but I remember talking with some readers about this, particularly in Supergirl, so I decided to post, feel free to ignore it.
Alright, a few hours ago I finished a certain discussion with my brother about a disagreement we had, there are a lot of stories, animes and other such things that he loves and I just can't get into.
Mostly, I absolutely love when stories in any format have 'Realism', but for me it's even more important when it's an animated or live action format.
Really, once I enjoyed the shounen style of story, where, when the MC is loosing, he screams very loudly, has a flashback, gets some motivation from shoutes and simply powers up, starting to beat the Villain despite having spent the entire fight getting his ass kicked.
I just can't enjoy that kind of thing anymore, I need some 'realism', but why do I put it like that?
Let's take a duel with swords, a realistic duel is fast, messy and ugly, limbs get tangled, techniques are butchered, edges aren't aligned and it ends extremely fast, two or three exchanges, 10 at most and it's over.
You spend more time staring at each other and taking steps foward and back than you do fighting, and when the fighting happen, it lasts 2, 3 seconds at most before it's over or you separate, only to start circling or taking small steps again.
The closest you could come to see a sword duel nowadays would probably be HEMA, (Fencing has deviated so much from something meant to kill that it's not even funny), if you want to see an exchange, here, an unusual HEMA fight: Hema throw
Then there's BUHURT, which kinda looks ridiculous from the outside, but is probably the closest we'll ever come to seeing a batlefield, a bunch of people wearing replicas of medieval armor and weapons, then attacking each other.
In short, realist is disapointing, it's ugly, looks silly and happens either too fast or too slow to put in a story or show.
Now, we've the other side, being flashy, being cool, and it's nice, it has its place like Zoro holding a sword on his mouth in One Piece, but in most stories I find it really disapointing.
Dragon Ball and One Piece are examples of where this kind of thing worked for me, then there are things like Fairy Tail, which worked for many people, but I just found tiresome.
Being cool is when someone throws things at a story just because they look nice, and it can certainly work, but most of the time the author doesn't make the effort to make it work, to earn it, or the way he tries to do it just doesn't fit his story.
One Piece is a very silly place, it's worldbuilding is silly on porpuse, so when someone puts a sword in his mouth, you don't find that ridiculous, and when Luffy finds an idiotic way to use his power or just refuses to step down and wins a fight, it's just that kind of world.
The Author took the time to craft a world where a flashback can give you a power-up and it doesn't feel that forced.
But what if you're in Game of Thrones? Or Lord of the Rings? Or something more recent like Arcane?
Even if youre not in a more serious story, instead you're in an anime, but you DON'T take the time to earn the siliness, you don't build your story to handle that kind of thing, it would still look ridiculous.
It's really disapointing to me when, at the last moment, despite being completely exhausted, the hero just... wins because, he just gets energy out of nowhere and suddenly beats a guy who wasn't just stronger than him, but MUCH stronger.
So, what I love is 'Realism' you still have the cool elements, but you use then well, you let the character earn them, and you make it look good while doing so.
In this aspect, I absolutely love Arcane Season 1, there's a scene in the first part where Vi has to fight a group of people, she's too young and too small to do it, but the show has been showing you she's a good fighters, someone who's trained for a long time.
Now, normally, they'd just throw her at the Thugs and she'd somehow overcome then no matter the numbers, but Arcane isn't stupid, and neither is Vi, the confrontation happens over a bridge, so they are FORCED to fight her one by one.
Now, they're not forced by the Author's heavy hand, or because they're stupid, or because of movie magic that makes then attack one at a time, instead, it's the location and a result of the circunstances that makes them fight her one at a time and gives her a chance.
Obviously, it was the Author who wrote things that way, but this is what I mean when I say they worked to achieve that result, Vi doesn't have a chance in that fight because the Author simply decided to GIVE her a chance, he earned it with good writing.
Then she also puts on metal gauntlets that let her hit harder, giving her more impact despite being a kid, and, when the fight happens, the moves are actually perfect, she uses actual boxing techniques to hit, dodge, move.
With realism, boxing can still look good, some people love watching it after all, but this is a story, so you can have 'Realism' you can have the character execute the techniques perfectly, in a speed that the watcher can see and have the Enemy react with clarity.
By using real techniques, in a situation that looks real, feel real, it's far more satisfying.
If everything in that scene was happening the same, but there wasn't a bridge and the thugs were still attacking one by one, it would be so disapointing, you'd notice people doing nothing as the fight happened.
On the other hand, if instead of real Boxing moves, she started to spin around, suddenly gaining a super punch and sending blasts of magic because she 'awoke' during the fight, that too would be completely unrealistic, ruining a good scene.
Also, since she's a kid, if she beat a bunch of Thugs all at the same time, it too would look really bad, really disapointing.
This is why I hate when people complain and say: BUT THERE'S DRAGONS IN THE WORLD, IT'S NOT REALISTIC!
Yes, there are dragons in the world, but if you stablish that a dragon is a stupid, horse sized lizard, I can buy that an unarmed civilian can kill it if they get very lucky, and that some armed man can hunt it easily.
If you stablish that Dragons are Castle Sized monsters with scales of steel, capable of flying and spewing out flames... well, you better have a damn good reason such creature would even land to fight you instead of say, flying overhead and cooking your entire army.
Take something like the first Dragon Age game, in the end you have to fight a dragon in a city, but the dragon isn't just going to land, the only reason you even manage to fight the creature is that one of the NPCs manage to climb into a tower and, when the beast does a fly by without seeing him since he's such a small human, he sacrifices himself, jump into the creature and, since he knows he can't kill the beast, cut into it's wings, making it extremely difficult for it to fly.
Then he falls to his death, because he jumped out of a freaking tower.
This is what it means to be 'realistic' in a fantasy setting, and you can achieve it with anything you want, failure is just a skill issue on the part of the writer or animator.
But it's not just the plot that bother me without 'realism', even the fight itself can be 'realistic'
Lets consider again swords, in Live Action a fight without any 'realism' looks terrible, it's utter crap, you can't help noticing openings and asking yourself, why didn't they attack there, why are those people waiting in line to attack him, why's he twirling his weapon like an idiot.
In live action, failure to make a fight 'realistic' isn't just lack of talent, it's lazyness, just hire someone who knows something about the fight you want to use, it's not that freaking hard.
Those faults can be mitigated in an animation by making it REALLY flashy, put a lot of color, a lot of movement, and you can get away with a lot, but it's still disapointing, expecially when 'realism' doesn't need to be boring, you CAN use real techniques and still make things great.
Look at Arcane, that scene I mentioned looks absolutely great, and everything there is 'realistic' you can fully imagine it happening in real life.
Here, let me show you three examples of 'realism' in a live action setting.
This is a sword duel, the choreography is probably the best I've ever seen and it's not in a movie, every technique is real: Adorea longsword fight duel
Here's a 1 VS many situation, where the guys actually used armor right, the Knight is basically a tank. : The Knight of Hope
Finally, since I write a STAR WARS fanfic, here's a lightsaber duel, well, it's not really a lightsaber, it just looks like one, but it's a legally distinct plasma weapon in the shape of a glowing sword : To The DEATH - YouTube
See, you can have 'Realism' in a fight and not lose the 'Cool' factor, you don't need to hide stupid moves with flash colors, you don't need to be unrealistic to look cool and, even if you feel you need to, you can try to deviate the least ammount possible.
Sure, a dodge roll isn't 'realistic' in any situation, but if everything else looks real and uses real techniques, you can get away with it, you can make the entire scene look good.
You can make an unrealistic situation have 'realism' and you can do it while looking cool too, you just have to make the effort.
Comments
CapitaoCav
I mean, there's a place for stories like that... usually in the younger audience, and there's a reason it's supposed to happen to the MC, someone who usually has unnatural determination. However, I do think stories would be better if they don't rely on it, not that they can't be good, but I think every single story ever writen would be better if the author didn't make use of that trope and instead spent more time thinking about how the MC could solve/survive/win that fight/problem.
Mac-something
I enjoyed reading this. It does a good job of articulating the requirements to make a fight narratively interesting to watch. As for fights where the protagonist suddenly discovers the ‘will to win’ the older I get the more I want to say ‘the real world doesn’t work like that’ whenever I see it. I don’t because it’s a a shitty and petty thing to do but… the history of world would be VERY different if sheer enthusiasm was all it took to win.
Joseph
For me realism doesn't matter as much as internal consistency. You can add whatever rule and change you want as long as it is consistent and evenly applied for me. So if you add magic, fine but why can your MC do something awesome but everyone else can't? If you can't answer that well it always looks like poor writing to me. If your MC can get a powerup from his memory why not the bad guys? Why aren't they powering up and turning around to whoop the MC too?
