#he has a WHOLE capture weapon SPECIFICALLY for tying people up do you realise how much you could do with that

[tklpilled]

will never understand the people who sexualise the mha kids because not only is it illegal, there are so many adult characters to make content of

[neverwatchedonepiece]

619: "Running Wild! Invincible General Franky!"

Pirate King, eh?

You know what? I’m almost apprehensive to leave Punk Hazard behind.

It was such a fun arc and ticked lots of my personal boxes (Caesar is absolutely awful and a treasure of a villain, I have decided). This apprehension is only because I don’t know what’s coming next. Judging by the plot threads Oda has set up so far, it’s fingers crossed I’ll enjoy Dressrosa as much as Punk Hazard.

This episode seemed to be split in two: the fond farewell to the arc and looking forward to the next. In one particular scene, both merged very effectively.

And Now, We Wait.

The Strawhats waiting for Usopp, Chopper and Brook was definitely a tying up of loose ends. The final piece of the puzzle of Punk Hazard is complete. Now, they only need to escape.

I love this shot. While the others were clambering onto Law’s truck, desperate to escape the lab caving in about them, Luffy and the other Strawhats calmly sat facing the door, unwilling to give up hope until all hope was lost. Because Luffy waited, they all stood by him and did the same. ;_;

The Strawhats definitely have Usopp to thank for guiding Chopper and Brook to safety. “50 meters to go! The Gate is closing. Slide in!” The gas really was gaining at that point but Brook kept everyone’s spirits up. “It’s only over when you give up.”

Chopper, Mocha and the G5 guys burst through first, followed by a very narrow scrape through by Brook and (frozen) Kinemon! Luffy was relieved. You could see the sweat beads on his forehead. But he never gave up hope and his faith in his crew paid off. (But it always helps to have someone like Usopp around, so credit where it is due.)

Another clue that the Strawhats might actually capture Caesar is that Usopp retrieved the cuffs from the Minions. They were so grateful for what Usopp had done for them that they fought to hand over their cuffs. 

The only slightly bad thing was that Brook accidentally let slip that Kinemon had been caught by the gas right in front of his kid.

Don’t think Momonosuke will be happy his dad is dead.

Is he dead, though? The other minions and G5 guys were left behind but why would Brook bother to bring Kinemon, if he couldn’t be revived? Unless it’ll be an honourable samurai funeral situation... ;_;

Actual Knife Energy

Meanwhile, outside at the Sunny, the Mega Mecha Air Battle between Franky and the Baby 5/Buffalo team was definitely looking to the future (specifically, the future battles and rivalries between Doflamingo and the Strawhat pirates).

As Baby 5 and Buffalo retreated from Franky’s firestorm of laser bullets, they hovered at a safe distance and had a “wtf is that?” moment. An old kung-fu movie style sequence of increasing close ups followed (I laughed). Then, without warning, Franky unleashed a General Left.

Baby 5 and Buffalo were sent reeling again. It was interesting they recognised Franky’s “pacifista” weapons straight away, and that they briefly considered Franky was one of Caesar’s inventions before realising Caesar has no interest in “human” weapons. I guess Caesar’s more a biochem kind of guy.

Well, whatever Franky was, Baby 5 said, if it wanted a fight...

She fired a ton of bullets in Franky’s general direction and thought she’d got him until the smoke cleared and a flash of glowing yellow cyborg eyes said, “Nope. Not even close.”

Then Franky injected a bit of humour into the firefight. Dat General Shield that was way too small. Dat Boomerang! xD

His dumb delaying tactics annoyed Baby 5 into changing form. Now, I am guessing Baby 5 and Buffalo have eaten those types of fruits that let you transform into objects (kind of the opposite of Funkfreed). Would those be Zoan fruits, or something else?

At any rate, their teamwork is pretty good. Buffalo knows how to support Baby 5 and set up her attacks. She transformed into a blade first (Espada Girl), then a missile (Missile Girl). It’s just a shame they’re up against Franky because he is armed to the teeth. Literally. Like, I would not be surprised if Franky has weaponised his teeth.

What probably threw Baby 5 and Buffalo was when they accused Franky of not letting them recover Caesar. Buffalo reminded Baby 5 that Doflamingo said “immediately” regarding Caesar’s recovery. (That itself is interesting. It shows Doflamingo’s orders are not to be defied.) Baby 5 transformed into a missile and yelled, “We’ll take Caesar with us!” and Franky was like, “Wtf are you talking about Caesar?”

I had an “uh oh” moment. Franky just wants to defend Sunny. Baby 5 and Buffalo want to recover Caesar. There is a tiny danger that all three will have a chat and agree to let everyone get what they want with no further conflict. Then Caesar will have escaped. Franky knows what Caesar did to the Strawhats, so I don’t think it’ll happen. But there is always a chance!

And speaking of Caesar...

The Centre of Alllllll the Trouble

I wonder if this guy knows just how much trouble he’s caused? I wonder if he knows his knowledge alone can turn the OPverse upside down? That Doflamingo sent two members of his team to retrieve him and was willing to sacrifice Monet and Vergo to do so makes it blindingly obvious.

Considering how egotistical Caesar is, he probably knows fine well and absolutely loves it.

Well, I say that. As of 619, he has no idea Doflamingo has sent anyone to rescue him. He’s currently flat out and convinced he’s going to die. 

But, Caesar cannot stop being Caesar. He felt about in his coat pockets, found Smoker’s heart in a box and decided to enact some scorched earth, nuclear revenge. I mean, if he’s gonna die, right?

The scary thing about Caesar is the sheer glee he feels whenever he does something awful. “I’ll take Smoker to hell with me!” he whispered. “It’s a shame I can’t watch him die. He’ll open his eyes, vomit blood and suffocate in no time. I’m excited just imagining it!”

Okay, Caesar. You do you.

He’s also the kind of guy who keeps shanks on his person. Holding it above the heart, he grinned and said, “It’ll cause fear and panic in all those he’s with.”

That’s Caesar in a nutshell. He develops biochem weapons. He’s a serial killer. He loves causing fear and panic. Punk Hazard really was a paradise for him and he manipulated everyone else around him into believing it too.

I don’t think Smoker will die. Mostly because Law is around and he might be able to fix any heart-stabbin’ antics with his Room Plus Medical Powers.

Still, I wonder what will be next for Caesar? If he goes back to Doflamingo, it’ll be business as usual, I guess. If Luffy and Law succeed... what the hell will they do with him? Luffy hates him. Will Law take him on?

I have no idea. It could go any way, really. I suppose it depends on how devoted Caesar is to Doflamingo. Whether Caesar is willing to go down with Doflamingo (I’m assuming this’ll happen because Doflamingo is a villain and Whole Cake Island comes after Dressrosa.)

RIP, Monet and Vergo

This sequence of scenes was very cool. Lots of beautiful art too.  The most interesting thing here was Monet and Vergo’s devotion to Doflamingo. That they were willing to die to help accomplish his goals. Doflamingo must either have some hellish power, hellish charisma or a hellish combination of both.

The action briefly cut to Dressrosa, where Doflamingo was taking a call from Monet. He couldn’t believe she was alive. (Neither could I. How she recovered from being halved is still a mystery.) She told him Vergo had been beaten. Caesar too. Doflamingo said not to worry. Baby 5 and Buffalo had been sent to retrieve Caesar.

Notice the lack of “and also retrieve you and Vergo.” Monet did notice... and she was fine with it.

“Oh, that’s good to hear,” she said.

Doflamingo apologised. “It’s all because of my misjudgement. I feel bad for you all but I want to make sure to wipe out all those squirts now.” 

Translated: I feel bad that you and Vergo are gonna die but I need this thing done.

He wanted Monet to push Caesar’s Big Red Button, the Big Damned Bomb that was also responsible for leveling Punk Hazard. “With just the push of a button, there will be only one survivor on that island and that is Caesar.”

Jeez. That’s harsh. He just straight up told her.

“You don’t have to say anything, Joker,” Monet answered. “I was just going to do that, anyway. I’m right in front of the triggering device. The explosion will ruin the tanker. You’re gonna lose a tanker. Is that okay?”

“I need you to perish along with everything else.”

“Yes, Young Master.”

What the actual? Monet, this is your LIFE and you are worried about this guy’s TANKER? Doflamingo has crazy control over these people. The scariest thing is that it is not just fear. These people admire him as much as the Strawhats admire Luffy. 

And the weirdest thing? Doflamingo seems to want to claim the Pirate King title.

That’s only Monet’s word, but why would she lie about something like that?

I always thought Doflamingo was dismissive about all the Old/New Era stuff. Now I’m wondering what his deal is.

Doflamingo at least had the grace to call Vergo for one last chat. Vergo was still in bits strung along the railing (it’s kinda gruesome, when you think about it.) He apologised to Vergo, said he had known him for the longest time and thanked him for all his work. Vergo smiled (in fractions). Like Monet, he was totally fine about dying, as long as Doflamingo said the right words.

Then, just before the island went KABOOM, Toei inserted a quick series of flashbacks. The G5 guys who sacrificed themselves with the thumbs up, the kids, the minions, Vergo, Monet, all the Strawhats, Law, Smoker, Tashigi, even Doflamingo perched on his window seat in Dressrosa pinching the bridge of his nose like, “Gawd this was a disaster...”

Now I think about it, it really was. Punk Hazard was a proper death-fest. Caesar gleefully murdered minions left, right and centre, he experimented on kids and nuked an entire island. Doflamingo is asking people to die for him. G5s sacrificed themselves. Though no one on the level of Whitebeard and Ace died, a lot of people bit the big one on Punk Hazard and it was worse in a way because at least in Marineford, they were all fighting for something. In Punk Hazard, people just died because Caesar/Doflamingo’s business.

Everyone’s fighting to survive right now.

Except Luffy. He’s riding a truck through a rapidly collapsing tunnel.

That’s his idea of a great day out.

Bye, Punk Hazard! It’s been an absolute pleasure.

[lawyernovelist]

Action/Adventure Writing: Capture

So, many months ago I said that in a few weeks I'd be putting up this post. Yeah. Not sure what happened to my scheduling there, since I do have an ideal order in which these things get finished and posted. I guess that, as the tagline says, I'm easily distracted.

With this post, we start getting into the meat of what really inspired this series in the first place; as I said at the beginning, it was driven by the fact that one of my pet peeves is crappy rescue scenes. Well, for there to be a rescue, someone has to get captured.

I thought long and hard about how to structure this one, because everything runs into everything else. Inevitably, therefore, this is going to end up being rather freeform. However, there is one thing to which I would like to give pride of place: motive.

As when writing combat, it's vitally important to determine the motives of those involved in the scene; just as in combat, there are risks involved for both characters, so they need to be motivated to take the actions you want them to take.

Now, unlike in combat the motivations are asymmetrical; the captor is the one driving the action. Why is she doing this? What's her interest in the person she wants to capture? Why is she taking him prisoner rather than killing him or letting him go free? Of those three options, taking a prisoner is likely to be the most risky and logistically difficult, so she needs to be motivated to do that rather than anything else.

In the case of the person being captured, it's a fair assumption that he doesn't want to be captured and that's his main motivation in the scene. However, how strong is that motivation? How hard is he likely to fight back?

First, you need to know why is this happening at all. Why does the captor initiate this whole interaction? There needs to be a reason right off the bat even before we can start discussing how strongly motivated she is and what actions she might take as a result.

Even after that, the strength of each character's motivation is going to be absolutely situation-specific, depending on, among other things:

Knowledge the characters have of one another;

Resources available to them, in terms of equipment, ability, escape routes, etc.;

Involvement of other characters, on either side;

If the captive knows that the captor won't harm him and he doesn't have a lot of options for escape, he's significantly less likely to put up a fight. On the other hand, if he knows there's some horrible fate in store for him if he's captured, he might at least attempt to fight to the death and the captor will need to be strongly motivated to put in the effort to take him alive.

As you can see, motivations interact a lot - a strongly-motivated captive needs a strongly-motivated captor in order for the scene to work. Likewise, if you want the scene to be big and impressive, you probably need a strongly-motivated captive in order to put up a fight against your strongly-motivated captor. A weak motivation on one side against a strong motivation on the other is going to result in a much shorter scene - either the strongly-motivated captive escapes (or is killed, depending on how the motivations of the captor run), or the weakly-motivated captive surrenders without much of a fight.

Finally, because motivation is situation-specific, it can change. For example, the captive might be strongly motivated to seek escape until he realises that a particular escape route isn't open to him, or a captor might not be motivated to put in the effort of capturing the captive rather than killing him until she realises who he is.

It's always my drumbeat with things like this: motivation. The more risky and difficult the action you want your character to take is, the more strongly-motivated he or she needs to be to take it.

Incidentally, this is getting silly. In reference to my NaNo from a couple of years ago, the captor's name is Thaurian and the captive's is Erain. She's a woman and he's a man in order to subvert the old cliche of the moustache-twirling villain tying an innocent maiden to the railroad tracks.

Anyway, I've talked about situation, and part of that is setting. By that I mean not only the setting of the story (fantasy, sci-fi, contemporary, historical, one country or another, and so on and so forth) but the actual location in which a scene or sequence takes place. Once again, I have to hark back to my combat post - I mentioned there that the setting can be important because of the resources it provides, and in this case it's also worth bearing in mind the possible presence of other people.

My first thought was people who might come in on Erain's side to protect him. However, depending on the situation and the attitudes of any onlookers, they might just as easily come in on Thaurian's side, or remain neutral. Say, for example, she's a police officer arresting a suspect - depending on myriad things about your setting and the situation, the reactions of any onlookers could go any way.

Furthermore, I mentioned earlier that this can be a sequence and not just a scene. That's because there may be multiple scenes and hence multiple locations in play - presumably, Thaurian is taking Erain prisoner and plans to take him somewhere to be imprisoned. Not necessarily, but in the majority of cases. That's also a location to be borne in mind, if only in terms of the resources Thaurian might have there and which she will need in order to take him there.

Resources are the final piece of the puzzle that you need to know about early on. And, again, I'm going to have to stay really vague because this can vary so much.

I am sorry for that, by the way; this whole post feels like it's been really empty of substance, but there's not much to say except a list of things to pay attention to.

Anyway, I've already mentioned resources in several places, and mostly what matters is the resources available to Thaurian, especially in terms of:

Help

Restraints and methods of imprisonment

Leverage

Leverage, in this context, means anything Thaurian can use to reduce Erain's motivation to escape. For example, if she has a hostage. Restraints and methods of imprisonment means anything she can use to make it physically harder for him to escape while and after actually capturing him. These can be things she brought with her or things she finds in the setting, depending on how much planning she's done.

Erain also has resources available to him (or not):

Help

Means of resistance

An escape route

Means of resistance can mean weapons or abilities or just anything Erain has that will help him.

Naturally, the fewer resources a character has - and, more pertinently, the greater the disparity - the stronger their motivation needs to be. If Erain's alone, unarmed, and cornered, he's going to need a good reason not to surrender, whether that comes from his knowledge of what might be in store for him if he's captured, determination to remain free for another reason, or anything else. Likewise, if it's just Thaurian to do this job and all she can really do is grab Erain and hold onto him, she's going to need a reason to do that.

And, the final piece which will be dependent on the characters, their motives, their setting, and their resources, all mixed up in what you actually want to do with the scene: what happens?

Of course, this is where even trying to provide case studies would get hideously complicated, so I'll just split into two types: violent and non-violent.

See, I've been acting this whole time as if there's going to be a fight. But it is the case that there might not be: Thaurian walks up behind Erain at a bar, puts a gun to his back and tells him to come with her, for example. In this case there's likely to be a much shorter scene, but depending on the situation and the characters it might make the most sense. Alternatively, you might have something much more violent whereby she ends up having to beat him into submission and drag him off in chains.

Of course, the situation might require one or the other, whether because of resources available, setting, and/or Erain's motivations and resulting actions. Thaurian might prefer one or the other. But before starting in on a fight scene for a capture scene, bear in mind that that might actually not make the most sense.

So that was a whistle-stop tour through my thoughts on capture scenes; I hope they've at least sparked some thoughts! I apologise for the lack of structure and detail, but, well, as you can see, everything is intertwined.

Next time, captivity. Hopefully that'll have slightly more structure.