Objectives in fiction
The Pressure of Objectives
An interesting thing I find many people saying these days is when they prefer anime where the characters don’t have a clear objective they try to complete. Well, that sounds like a boring type of show to follow, doesn’t it? Let’s look into it by mentioning two relevant examples.
The first one is Sword Art Online compared to Log Horizon. Leaving aside the crap in writing and presentation, and sticking only to the premise, both shows are about people trapped in a different world, and where they try to find a way back home. The thing is, in Log Horizon there is no pressure. They take their sweet time to establish a new way of life there, they do silly missions, they waste years in exploring and forming guilds, with the objective being the least of their concerns. In sword art online we get the opposite approach. People really want to get out and try really hard to get through the levels until they find the exit at the end. They too spend years in exploring and forming guilds but not because they want to establish a new way of life. These are done to increase their chances of survival, thus serving the main objective.
The lack of pressure in Log Horizon lies in how nobody can die there, and nobody knows of a way to return home. With no clear objective of what they are supposed to do, returning home seems like a distant dream. In Sword art online, they do die and they do know of a way to return, thus they have all the reason to press forward towards that goal. And here is the aesthetic difference; without pressure, log horizon becomes mostly slice of life where we get to see how the characters live, and where the focus is placed on world building and character fleshing out. Since there is a lot of pressure and tension in sword art online, the show becomes mostly action survival where the battles and the mentality of the characters are far more important than the world they are part of. Most areas are only shown once and the characters are not fleshed out because the end goal is more important than world building or character fleshing out.
The second example is black bullet compared to attack on titan. Sticking only to the premise again, both shows are about people living in cities surrounded by huge walls that are there to protect them from huge monsters. In black bullet, they don’t really seem worried about the crisis. People die by the dozens and the main characters are more interested in buying beans in discount, or have harem moments with big breasted bimbos and obnoxious lolis, as if the whole thing is a school comedy. Attack on titan is the opposite of that. The main focus is to kill all the monsters and the main characters doesn’t waste time in doing anything else but that. The objective is clear and everybody is pressing forward towards that goal.
A major difference with this second example compared to the first is world building. Despite lacking tension and being comedy half the time, black bullet doesn’t have much to show in its setting, whereas attack on titan despite being all about killing the monsters, or being killed by them, still has a far more elaborate setting. And the reason for that is duration. Black bullet is a rushed 12 episode series while the other three are 24 and with enough material for sequels. They have plenty of time to do world building. Imagine how easier it is for perpetual ongoing shonen which can last for hundreds of episodes. For example, one piece is about finding one piece but they don’t focus on said quest as they do on just having fun along the way and exploring every island they go to.
Another thing to point out is that when a show takes its time to flesh out the setting then it has no thrill, and as such there is little motivation to keep watching if you don’t like the world the show takes place in. If on the other hand there is pressure then most of the entertainment lies in the excitement of the action and the knee jerk reactions when someone dies or a plot twist comes out of nowhere. The main problem with the second case is that tension does not have duration. You can watch a show for liking its setting indefinitely, but you cannot remain excited all the time for a show that is constantly trying to be thrilling. You eventually get used to the action, you get desensitized to the deaths of characters, and you expect plot twists to happen because you know the show will definitely do that.
And this eventually makes the shows that are about tension to become like the shows that are about world building. If you have been following the titles I mentioned, then you know sword art online eventually became a harem comedy with absolutely no tension where the characters are simply playing videogames, or how attack on titan gave up on the whole quest of defeating the titans and became some weird conspiracy concerning the politics of the human world. It’s because after the novelty wears off there is nothing to keep the audience interested, and thus all that is left is liking it just for the setting it takes place in.
Thus it’s obvious that shows where the objective is just an afterthought and where the characters are mostly interacting with their environment, are superior to shows where it’s just action and gore. I can even say that the best shows are the ones which know how to jump from one style to another without falling apart. For example, naruto began about the protagonist trying to become the leader of his village, but as soon as that main objective got thrown to the side for world building and chasing after whatever Sasuke was doing, the show lost its magic. Bleach was fun while introducing all the humans and the death gods, but as soon as that was over, it fell apart and just went for rehashing the same stuff with no consistency at all. Legend of the galactic heroes does not fall apart when it jumps from sociopolitical dialogues to interstellar warfare. That’s why it’s such a brilliant show.
In other words, objectives are not important. Elaborating on characters and settings is what maintains the interest of the audience. And that’s why Akame ga kill is complete horseshit. Oh yeah, we want to kill the main bad guy but instead of simply attacking the castle we have these retarded missions which end up killing most of us and have nothing to do with our objective. Brilliant.
Moving the Goalposts Fallacy
Moving the Goalposts is a logical fallacy that has many different applications, all of which exist to mislead, cheat, manipulate, and as a whole make a joke out of the story by betraying the trust of the viewer. Here are 3 cases of how this happens and why you shouldn’t like it without thinking about it first.
Changing the objective of a story, after the story has began, make the characters to re-evaluate the situation. It often changes the purpose of character actions, and even gives them pardon for everything they did up to that point. They cannot be blamed, since none of the objectives are completed, thus none of their actions can be properly evaluated as good or bad. In fact, most of the times changing objectives renders their actions completely pointless.
Moving the objective further away as the characters get close to it, is considered to be a plot twist, since the viewer is surprised to find out the story doesn’t end where he thought it would end. Never clarifying how close the characters are to completing an objective has a similar effect. It is also prolonging the show indefinitely, making it unnecessarily way longer than it needs to be. This doesn’t make it better, since without completing objectives there is no sense of progress, and makes character actions pointless. You may not be realizing this while you are watching a show, but once you complete it and look back at how long it was, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out how pointless most of it was.
Subverting expectations by changing or moving objectives, creates tension by making further events unpredictable. Anticipation though, does not make a show better by simply being there; it only raises expectations and makes it way easier to be disappointed if something doesn’t work out as amazingly as you imagined it.
Meaning, any initial goal and its position are more than enough to tell a good story. You just need to make the journey towards it interesting, instead of trolling the audience by constantly pulling the rug under its feet.