Western Animation - Discuss American, Canadian, and European cartoons here (or just bitch about wokeshit, I guess)

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The_Gam3 said:
(...)While I claim to be tired of these mystery box type narratives,(...)
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What exactly is this "mystery box" thing? It reminded me of the principle of Chekhov's Gun, yet the definition is:
Chekhov's gun is a writing principle emphasizing that every element in a story should have a purpose, with a famous quote attributed to playwright Anton Chekhov stating, "If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired". Introduced by Chekhov as advice to other writers, this principle means that any significant or prominent object, detail, or character trait should later play a crucial role in the plot or theme, avoiding unnecessary elements and false promises to the audience.
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I don't think The_Gam3 understands how Mystery Box works. They're not obfuscating anything or leaving IOUs for character motivation, they're just leaving a couple things open as plot hooks.
 
"Mystery box" implies you're asking the audience a bunch of questions that you, the writer, do not have the answer to. Most notably used to describe how JJ Abrams wrote The Force Awakens, where everything in the movie was setting up things to be explored in the next film, except he didn't have any answers to give the writer of the next film, who had to make do with a bunch of nothing.
 
The character looks remarkably similar this artist portrait from Drawfee (random artist group I found on TikTok)
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The greater a'tuin said:
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KissMyTaint said:
Something that I’ve been meaning to ask but keep forgetting, but what is the point of a studio unionizing? Like I get that it would be beneficial for the studio to not get completely fucked over but is there something else that I’m not seeing?
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On paper, the point is to not get fucked over as you said. In practice, it's a way for them to basically get job security and better benefits, but only for the "senior" workers. The newbies can cry about it if anything happens to them. Small-scale unions are cliques that you fit into or get ejected from, except you're being ejected from the company because you failed their personal vibe check. For large-scale unions like SAG-AFTRA, they're basically an industry of their own that exists to keep out anyone from the industry that isn't in their clique, and if you want a union member in your project, you need to either use only VAs from their union, or advertise all the non-union VAs to them that you WANT to use, that THEY have to approve. And I think you have to pay them for each non-union VA you use, but it's been a while since I read SAG's clause about that shit so I may be misremembering. How could Fran Drescher do this?

In short; Small unions are cliques so studios would want to unionize to form official cliques, and large unions are mafias without the Italians, which want to legally monopolize their "turf" or if they can't do that, get paid their dues where applicable.
 
Cryogonal2 said:
"Mystery box" implies you're asking the audience a bunch of questions that you, the writer, do not have the answer to. Most notably used to describe how JJ Abrams wrote The Force Awakens, where everything in the movie was setting up things to be explored in the next film, except he didn't have any answers to give the writer of the next film, who had to make do with a bunch of nothing.
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Its frustrating how you can easily pull this concept off properly by just writing with a definitive answer in mind. So many productions in the west have gone to complete shit because writers don't think beyond the sentence they are typing.
KissMyTaint said:
Something that I’ve been meaning to ask but keep forgetting, but what is the point of a studio unionizing? Like I get that it would be beneficial for the studio to not get completely fucked over but is there something else that I’m not seeing?
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Same as unionization for anything short of the trades. The animation studio gets a ton of useless positions to leech off of productions with the false promise of a stronger voice. There is also the factor that the vast majority are leftist who fetishize unions as a concept, so naturally they would want one in their work place regardless of logic.
 
Cryogonal2 said:
Small unions are cliques so studios would want to unionize to form official cliques, and large unions are mafias without the Italians, which want to legally monopolize their "turf" or if they can't do that, get paid their dues where applicable.
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Didn't the Irishman movie explained how some italian mafias transitioned into unions to operate using the same tactics in a more legal way?
 
The_Bladder_Splatter said:
Didn't the Irishman movie explained how some italian mafias transitioned into unions to operate using the same tactics in a more legal way?
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The sopranos showed how it all worked way back in the early 2000's. Frankly, Unions could never get off the ground against big business and the government without the muscle and influence of the mob back when they were first forming.
 
Trollblade69 said:
I don't think The_Gam3 understands how Mystery Box works. They're not obfuscating anything or leaving IOUs for character motivation, they're just leaving a couple things open as plot hooks.
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It just felt that way. Who knows if those hooks are actually going to be paid off in an actual series.
 
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