Okay, everybody sing: There can be miracles, when you’re the protagonist in a fictional narrative…
Yeah, all right, Joyce’s epiphany here isn’t really one I subscribe to. But she does! And that still works, right? This is a story. And we’re exactly at that point in the story where it seemed all hope was lost and everybody was going to die, but here comes the Winds of Dramatic Change, y’all. We’re reboundin’. It’s Second Wind, baby.
don’t tell mandy and grace, i guess
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my brother calls this (and Sailor Moon’s) power “wanting it badly enough”
like, we just WANT to win, so there
DRAMA
It’s totally that. And it’s not just used in Sailor Moon or this comic, it’s EVERYWHERE in fiction, and it works really well despite being total horseshit. I believe all fiction is wish fulfillment on some level, and there’s no purer form of wish fulfillment than “good things will happen because i want them to”
“It works really well”: I’ll agree to disagree there. Nothing destroys my emotional investment in a story faster than when the hero has been losing and losing and LOSING a fight, the villain’s beating the hell out of the hero, the hero’s on the floor and can’t rise, there’s clearly internal bleeding, but suddenly it turns around and viewpoint character starts winning just because viewpoint character GETS MAD. Saw this in anime a lot for a while, so I started watching a lot less anime.
It’s not so much of a problem here because David was a better storyteller than that. Joyce had the gun with immense firepower (already established) on the last page, she just had to find her center enough to use it. Her ability to fly, Tony’s immense strength, the fact that this isn’t nearly enough to beat the Martians, it’s just bought some folks a couple of minutes– nobody’s pulling a win out of their asses here, even if the speechifying is somewhat similar to other stories where they do.
In all fairness, strong emotion and/or desperation may indeed overpower the psychological or even physiological restraints for a last “miraculous” shot of strength or resolve. That doesn’t bother me, especially when the person in question is repaying that loan with their lives just then and there. What bothers me is when afterward, many times there are no consequences at all.
An anime that I believe does this correctly is My Hero Academia. Like in most series of the genre, the characters are able to pull feats of strength and power far beyond their known limits at certain points. However, doing so has taken a real, permanent toll in their bodies.
Yeah, My Hero Academia is a great exception that proves the rule. It actually looks at the idea of pushing past your limits as a theme, not just a convenient path to A-plot resolution, and mines a lot of interesting drama from the contradictions inherent in that idea (I mean, if you go beyond your limits, they aren’t really LIMITS, are they? But where’s your REAL limit?). “Go beyond, plus ultra” on the one hand: “my body’s been practically destroyed, so are you SURE you want to follow my example?” on the other.
I works in real life as well, I can personally atest to that. Never underestimate the power of human willpower. It’s what makes even tiny mothers able to lift a car off of their child in extreme circumstances, or some soldiers to continue advancing even when they’ve been shot to pieces. History is full of examples like that.
“But she is an idiot, and a loathsome schemer!” wailed the Master of aesthetic.
“This is true,” said YISUN fondly, “but she carries with her the most powerful mastery, which is the hunger of desire. She is the Master of want.”
A Second Wind? But she didn’t even shoot a bandit.
Maybe her boyfriend flying around in a robot body counts as having D374-TP summoned.
Now I want to see a Martian running around, engulfed in flames, screaming “I smell delicious!”
Or maybe ANY character saying, “Welcome to die!”
Preferably someone who can control magnetic fields.
I dunno. While I am non-Christian, I do get what Joyce is saying. And, in fact, I don’t really see it as Christian at all – it seems more Humanist to me. The power of human beings to do things we thought previously impossible. Having faith in oneself. And the stubborn determination to keep trying even in the face of seemingly impossible odds.
Yeah, no, I’m right there with Joyce. While it doesn’t happen often, sometimes, rarely, humans can be fucking awesome.
Yeah, that’s kinda what Joyce’s speech in this strip feels like to me as well.
Is it really all that humanist, or are you just filtering it through your worldview?
She puts “I” firmly in the centre. I wouldn’t say if it’s specifically humanist, but her speech here could be made to fit any context where personal responsibility and agency is a thing.
Strongly agree. Except in very limited contexts like, say, extended periods of torture, we do have the power to decide our faith. And when times seem dark, when times ARE dark, I’d argue we have a moral responsibility to do so, to have faith that we can make things better even in the absence of immediate evidence. Maybe that means we’ll go down swinging, but if we don’t choose that faith, then we’ll DEFINITELY fail.
In Panel 1, are those Martians and PIECES of Martians filling the air above Joyce & around the plasma bolt that she”s fired skywards?
This comic, in Koyce’s storyline, immediately follows this comic.
Check the last panel: It’s pieces of Mike and a Martian!