Well of Souls Forums

There is a lot of well written and acted scifi available.

DS9, for all it's strengths and flaws, I now realize ended in the best way it could have.

Since I am older I understand much that sailed right over my head when I watched it as a teen.

The Dominion was doomed anyway due to the Founders deteriorating from a virus, and the Jem-hadar were running out of their only food supply they could use.

Sure the Alliance could have fought to the finish but it would have been the end of of all their spacefleets combined, wrecking the Alpha Quadrant powers for a longer time than in the original ending or worse... since as genocidal as the Founders were they would probably pull a few doomsday weapons out of cold storage before they bit the dust and wreck a few more Feddie worlds.

If the alliance waited things out to gather strength the founders would die off and the Jemhadar like rabid dogs would attack everyone and everything once their food supply ran low.

Likewise, the Invincible comic, bloody and gory though it is, has a phenomenal ending, and essentially had to end the way it did to break the vicious cycle the Viltrumite alien race kept repeating to their and everyone elses ruin.


I do not know how Outsider will end... but I think it will probably be one of those inevitable ending types.

I say this because given the genocidal nature of the war, the bad type ending seems obvious, so to avoid it victory must... some way, become an inevitable outcome some way some how.


I like how stories narrow it down by even showing how things could not have ended any other way then how they did... not any other way that is not a totally bad ending anyway.

Ultimately we are all headed for our own inevitable endings... so in that sense, inevitable endings in a story are a very... relatable, dare I say, even comforting kind of thing for us humans.

We cannot fully comprehend the infinite, but the finite?

We got that!

Infinite possibility I personally think is scary anyway, and deep down I imagine most feel that way. We like limits to define, and rules to control so there is not limitless anarchy.

I went off on a tangent I know... but... your thoughts?

For a video game I am all for multiple good endings though lol. It increases replay value!

My favourite game has several endings.
Some bad.
Some just a black screen. After a big white flash.
One good.
Some good with goodies. (Actually, the goodies come before the boss-fight: resurrected Shofixti, re-united Pkunk and Yehat)

It took me until the UQM-OpenSource version to get the benefits of the last one (since I never had a slot free to make use of the goodies)....


And the best ending is upcoming.... UQM2 is on the way. :)


But for Outsider?
I'm waiting for an idea of what it could be, besides another galaxy-wide break-down of JumpSpace travels, and the Witches/Elerians/Loroi use their telepathy to continue somewhat coordinated development to be ahead when the Meklars/Silicoid/Umiak have depleted their worlds and a breakdown in economies and the JumpSpace opens up again....

But that solution would come from outside and not be driven by the characters.

Although I suppose people love DVD extras, I usually take it as a bad sign when I see that a movie had multiple endings.

A good story usually has a very specific beginning, middle, and end. There are a variety of ways to get there, but it seems to me that if you don't know what the ending of your story is, you're making it up as you go. And that very rarely works (though I can think of a few exceptions). A story with a different ending is a different story. If you don't know what story you're telling, then what the hell are you doing?

A lot of details in Outsider have changed since I posted the first pages in 2001, but not the ending. Outsider isn't Shakespeare, but it tells a specific story.

Arioch wrote: ↑

Mon Oct 09, 2023 7:10 am

A lot of details in Outsider have changed since I posted the first pages in 2001, but not the ending. Outsider isn't Shakespeare, but it tells a specific story.

Details, hmm?

(Side-eye at the About page, and the 107-page chapter 2...

Q: How long is this comic going to be?
A: The story as currently outlined is 8 chapters (of about 75 pages each), plus a short prologue and epilogue; probably a total of about 600 pages.)



That said, I definitely would not want you to cut things short! Take the time you need. And, thank you.

--Mithramuse

Arioch wrote: ↑

Mon Oct 09, 2023 7:10 am

Although I suppose people love DVD extras, I usually take it as a bad sign when I see that a movie had multiple endings.

A good story usually has a very specific beginning, middle, and end. There are a variety of ways to get there, but it seems to me that if you don't know what the ending of your story is, you're making it up as you go. And that very rarely works (though I can think of a few exceptions). A story with a different ending is a different story. If you don't know what story you're telling, then what the hell are you doing?

A lot of details in Outsider have changed since I posted the first pages in 2001, but not the ending. Outsider isn't Shakespeare, but it tells a specific story.

Yeah infinity is overated, since without creating the finite (AKA deadlines, schedules, and prioritizing) the only thing we create... is failure.

Infinity without the finite is... useless.

Just ask Batman here... oh that's right, you can't lol.

"A story with a different ending is a different story. If you don't know what story you're telling, then what the hell are you doing?"

I definitely agree. Often when I write something, the ending is the first thing I know. Sometimes I have the ending, then the beginning, and then after that it's just getting the plot from point "A" to point "B", with as many scenes along the way as seems appropriate. Not everyone does it that way, of course.

For a series that's designed to go on indefinitely, that can be done in theory, with story arcs that each play out with a beginning, middle and end. In practice in the world of television, this almost never works, with shifting teams of writers, producers and actors. One of the greatest strengths of series like Babylon 5 and Deep Space Nine was that their first few seasons had clearly been planned out ahead of time; it's very satisfying for the audience to have the feeling of progression of a consistent story. One of the greatest weaknesses of the same series was that their last few seasons clearly hadn't been planned out. In the case of Bab 5 it was just anti-climactic, but in the case of DS9 things just got silly. (Gul Dukat is a good long-running adversary, but wait... now the Klingons are the bad guys, and Dukat is redeemed as a hero! No, now he's a villain again. And we defeated him but now he's... possessed by a demon???)

If I ever get to the end of the Outsider story arc and want to continue in the same world, it would be as a new story (that's what the "Project Forward" concept is).

B5 had the disadvantage of having been planned for five seasons, then it got cut short to 4 seasons, but while shooting fourth season, the message came that a fifth season is approved.
So Michael Strazynski had rewritten the story to have his ending in the fourth, and now had to stretch it out to five seasons again.
Which did not work out well.

Regarding gul dukat, they had plans pretty far in advance for a redemption arc that ends in him getting with kira. The actress refused to do it. What they actually went with was afaik pretty unplanned. The ability to recover from human-factors related disruptions to something that may have been getting set up for multiple seasons is an underappreciated aspect of television (in this case I agree they did not recover particularly well).

https://redshirtsalwaysdie.com/2021/10/ ... gul-dukat/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMqveW5V4vQ

QuakeIV wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 10, 2023 9:14 pm

The ability to recover from human-factors related disruptions to something that may have been getting set up for multiple seasons is an underappreciated aspect of television (in this case I agree they did not recover particularly well).

On the contrary, I think it's one of the most obvious problems with long-running series. The most glaringly obvious being when an actor leaves the series.

I thought the Dukat redemption arc was going pretty well, though I was a bit uncomfortable with where they seemed to be going with Dukat and Kira, because that seemed like something that Kira would never, ever do. If that was the nature of Nana Visitor's objection, then I agree with her. But surely there's more to redemption than being able to shack up with Kira... that doesn't seem like a valid reason to have him turn evil again (and throw away all that character work).

It was a driver, the idea is he wanted her and he wanted to prove himself to her. She was, of course, rather the worst possible choice. This was kindof the idea. If she as a character could be swayed that he had meaningfully changed, then that would complete the arc.

As to the actors justification, check the youtube link, its only a minute.

Dukat was an incurable narcissist, and that was his fatal flaw. I thought they portrayed that pretty well throughout his entire arc, and I'm not sure there ever was a point where Dukat was truly on the road to redemption. He was only taking different approaches to seeking validation for his point of view that he was somehow the savior of Bajor and a good guy.

His narcissism is also the reason Kira could never have ended up with him. She liked the humble guys (e.g, Shakaar, Bareil, Odo), and found the egotists (e.g., Dukat, Quark, and initially Bashir) completely insufferable.