Y3K's Very Interesting Essay About SPD

[Keith Justice]

Don't have time cuz I have guests coming over, but real quick I totally agree that on a narrative scale SPD fell apart pretty badly, but that still didn't take away from the world that was designed around SPD. It makes it so my imagination doesn't have to work hard to feel that that's a world where I could adventure in.

Dino Thunder wasn't a fantasy world, but just kids jammed into a situation. There were a TON of missed oppurtunities, tho the overall story was much tighter, I'll admit. It's jus they didn't create a world I found at all intriguging like I did of the SPD world, Mystic world and hits mythology and OO.

More later!

 

[Skyknight]

PR is'nt about the atmosphere, but about the group of teens who form the Rangers. I don't want to stare at how great the sets are, I want to know how good the characters are consistently.

SPD and TF have a future that looks vast, with mutli-faceted levels of wealth and poverty, but big whoop de doo, we want to watch POWER RANGERS, and the emphisis should be on them exploring why this environment around them is so superficial, cold, and hypocritical, TF explored this, SPD could easily have.

"Hammy storylines"..what the heck would you call "Perspective", "Impact", "Robotpalooza" heck, the line "BUTTERY?"

We get it, you don't like Doug, you don't like ham and cheese, but SPD, MF and OO are more guilty of being THAT tje WRONG way than NS and DT combined the RIGHT way, and it's becoming IMPOSSIBLE to deny or defend that

Honestly, it's the atmosphere that renders Bruce superior over Doug in your opinion, not the quality of the storylines, which ARE occasionaly written by Jackie who worked on Doug's seasons. It's boarderline hypocrisy here, bias for the sake of it. There is no shame in finding something solid in the ham, and if you find shame, you're missing out.

 

[Dora Ebi]

* blink *

Yes, considering PR is the continuation of the 1950's "boys adventure genre," I think teens getting thrust into a situation makes perfect sense. That's what MMPR was. That's what the DNA which makes up the very foundation of the franchise. Ordinary kids in an extraordinary universe doing impossible things.

I'm not sure I understand what it is you WANT from PR. Similarly, "missed opportunities" is completely avoiding the issue entirely. Every season has missed opportunities. There's a massive time jump at the end of Space because Chip didn't have time to shake up the universe prior to the finale (or kill Darkonda twice more). WHAT missed opportunities do you refer to? Are they as huge and glaring as failing to tell us what SPD as an agency is? The implicit conceit of the season?

Keith, I can't help but think you're not parsing the argument you want to be making. You regard these shows as exercises in projecting yourself into a fictional universe? So in that regard, you really don't care about what the auspices of SPD are. You don't care about the storylines, or the character arcs, or anything of the sort. The series is entirely an extension of you... Playing with your toys as a kid, basically. It's role play.

See, for the first time I actually think I understand why character, storytelling, etc. don't mean anything to you. The universe is an extension of your own imagination, so you can project yourself into this universe as a superhero. Thus why DT doesn't work for you. You can't fantasize about being an ordinary high school student who saves the world and tries to juggle their lives around that. You have to fantasize about being lost a thousand years in the past and living in a clock tower with an owl.

That is FASCINATING to me. You are, in effect, the thing most of the fandom has always wanted. A member of the target audience with communications skills solid enough to convey WHAT it is he gets out of the series as an extension of his own imagination. Which is not something the world has in abundance with eight-year-olds.

I think I'm phrasing this right, because if you're seriously going to claim OO makes sense as a story or a universe, when we've got three villain factions alternately behaving as though stopping one another is the most important thing possible and not making any effort to keep tabs on one another, I will scream at you -- there is no sense of a larger universe here.

But if I ignore that you don't mean "world" as in "something which structurally makes sense as its own narrative entity" and take it rather as you meaning "environment I can pretend I'm living in"... Suddenly your likes and dislikes make INFINITELY more sense to me. You don't like MMPR because they have normal lives, and they have friends who are normal people. You want them to be Power Rangers all the time.

Am I misconstruing you here, Keith? Take no offense if I am. But if this is close to the mark... My god, no wonder your tastes run so counter to most of the fandom. You aren't basing your criticisms on narrative or logical criteria. You base them on roleplay. In which case, my god -- I literally cannot debate anything with you. A good portion of the fandom cannot. We lack the software to understand you as much as you us. Relative "good" and "bad" do not exist. Debate doesn't exist. It's all just gut first-impressions.

... I can honestly say I've never considered a person might have a thought process like that. It's like when I finally understood how George Rodd perceives Ranger powers to "work," as frequencies of light. That's so counter to how I'm wired to think, I am in no way designed to refute or debate that.

Thank you. I'd always tried to figure out why I couldn't understand you (or why universe-destroying lapses in logic don't seem to "destroy a world" to you), and now I think I can appreciate why I was unable to.

 

[Dora Ebi]

PR is'nt about the atmosphere, but about the group of teens who form the Rangers. I don't want to stare at how great the sets are, I want to know how good the characters are consistently.

SPD and TF have a future that looks vast, with mutli-faceted levels of wealth and poverty, but big whoop de doo, we want to watch POWER RANGERS, and the emphisis should be on them exploring why this environment around them is so superficial, cold, and hypocritical, TF explored this, SPD could easily have.

"Hammy storylines"..what the heck would you call "Perspective", "Impact", "Robotpalooza" heck, the line "BUTTERY?"

We get it, you don't like Doug, you don't like ham and cheese, but SPD, MF and OO are more guilty of being THAT tje WRONG way than NS and DT combined the RIGHT way, and it's becoming IMPOSSIBLE to deny or defend that

Honestly, it's the atmosphere that renders Bruce superior over Doug in your opinion, not the quality of the storylines, which ARE occasionaly written by Jackie who worked on Doug's seasons. It's boarderline hypocrisy here, bias for the sake of it. There is no shame in finding something solid in the ham, and if you find shame, you're missing out.

Hold up a sec, though. While I appreciate the seconding of my emotion, I think Keith gave the most honest answer he could here. He literally cannot conceive of good qualities BY HIS OWN STANDARDS in these seasons, because they don't meet the criteria by which he judges entertainment to be up to snuff.

By our standards, he's being a giant hypocrite. He wants contradictions and anomalies, provided the show is giving him a fantastical environment (what he calls "a world") to inhabit. He wants his imagination to take him TO this place, he does not use his imagination to think critical thoughts ABOUT this place.

As such, it does not bother him that SPD is more than likely some kind of evil agency set to conquer a galaxy brought to the brink of devastation by the Alliance of Evil. Or that Time Force WAS a corrupt regime which oppressed the poor, innocent mutants. Even contradictory character motivations can fall in under that umbrella.

I don't think Keith understands that's hypocrisy, by his own criteria. He just doesn't like PR to be grounded in any kind of a "real" environment, or make efforts to develop the characters as people. He wants a world he can himself be a Ranger in. This is the goddamned Rosetta Stone for Keith Hayward, as far as I'm concerned.

I do agree with you, btw -- but I never considered Keith may not actually understand the arguments we are making before. And that's not to call Keith dumb, simply that I've never known an adult who thought this way before.

 

[SaikoDragon]

What this all boils down to, guys, is that we all get something different out of Power Rangers and we all watch it for different reasons. The conclusion is that we will never fully agree on what makes Power Rangers good or bad. PR is so diverse every year that it's impossible for everyone to agree on even one thing about the show (when it means saying whether or not it's good). And it's down right terrible that people attack each other because of it.

See, if Power Rangers were more interesting, we wouldnt have to have conversations like this. God dammit Bruce, get back to doing your job!

 

[Silver Alien Ranger]

GPD, that's called discussion. It happens at discussion forums. Welcome to the Internet.

 

[SaikoDragon]

GPD, that's called discussion. It happens at discussion forums. Welcome to the Internet.

Thanks. Can I hang my coat here or..?

 

[Skyknight]

I do agree with you, btw -- but I never considered Keith may not actually understand the arguments we are making before. And that's not to call Keith dumb, simply that I've never known an adult who thought this way before.

No doubt, he almost looks at PR like the DC comics of the 1940's and 1950's, all front covers that boast of SuperDickery, giant monkeys, Lois Lane wedding Lex Luthor in imaginary tomes...and then when he opens the comic he finds the same damn thing he read last month/last week. Where the good guys always win, the bad guys always lose, and there's no attempt at redefining either side's political or personal motivations. (And without the benefit of the Imaginary Stories either)

That's a world that can never exist, even to save it's own ass logically, but that's the place that those comics used to serve the same purpose for.

Usually, we wink at those comics the same way there winking back, there not as innocent as they claim, they know Seduction of the Innocent tied their ass to a cactus, they know all they can do is charmful fluff. SPD does'nt wink, MF and OO don't wink, they invite the reader/viewer as if they can contribute something to their week or month, and unlike ol' Jules back then, they don't know when they'll get the chance to change, nor work around the situation they are in presently to provide something fun, and something that winks back.

For pete's sake, even Masked Rider's END CREDITS winked back at the viewer for putting up with twenty-five minutes worth of Kamen Rider butchery.

EDIT: Yup, I just saw the ABOVE post you made expressing that very point about the 1950's attitude. I came to the same conclusion.

 

[Dora Ebi]

See, I'd refute that. The Silver Age was wonderfully fantastical, and often did random crap for the sheer joy of TRYING to do random crap. That's something MMPR used to do. Look at the issue where Superman gains the ability to create a tiny little version of himself with all his powers, and develops deep envy of his miniature self.

Comics today WISH they were that fucked up. I agree Keith has the mentality of someone who would absolutely adore imaginary stories as extensions of roleplay, with little regard for the fact they're a real narrative cheat to evade ever providing actual payoff, but that seems a trifle too... Bash-happy for my tastes.

 

[Dora Ebi]

For pete's sake, even Masked Rider's END CREDITS winked back at the viewer for putting up with twenty-five minutes worth of Kamen Rider butchery.

EDIT: Yup, I just saw the ABOVE post you made expressing that very point about the 1950's attitude. I came to the same conclusion.

And now, in turn, I understood where you were going. Sorry, thought you were coming down on the Silver Age, which I love. ;-)