Chrono Compendium
Zenan Plains - Site Discussion => Polling => Topic started by: ZealKnight on August 01, 2009, 02:03:02 pm
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I don't know how to make it so you can actually vote, but anyway. People love Shakespeare, particularly English teachers, but to me the Chrono Series's story was much more worth while. Most of the time I hear that his writing wasn't great he just knew his audience, which was retarded. Not that he couldn't write he has some great poems, but his plays usually suffered from plots that I thought were stupid (like Othello's motivation was some black guy got the job he wanted and the plot was like Gossip Girl Extreme). In Chrono Trigger Lavos is a biological creature who has to do that. And in Cross it was a thing of war but in an extremely unique way. Plus the romance of Romeo and Juliet can't compare to Schala and Serge,even if you don't think Serge and Kid were in love just role with it. Romeo and Juliet couldn't be in love because of their countries' war, probably something extremely new for western literature (I say that because my friend took Middle Eastern Lit and found stories of the same nature written before Shakespeare). But in Cross Kid and Serge couldn't be toghter for many reasons. 1. different time periods 2. Different time lines 3. Schala's a princess and he's a fisherman 4. he dies before she can meet him so on and so on. I'll admit it's not really the same thing being two different genres. But still I'd rather watch the story of someone's playthrough on Chrono Cross or Chrono Trigger than any Shakespeare play. Anyone else feel the same way?
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If your teachers are claiming that Shakespeare's plays are of value because of their plots, said teachers need to do a bit of studying of their own. It's known that Shakespeare's plots were derivative--he even plagiarized other contemporary plays! What makes his work literature is his skill in characterization and with the language. On those bases, I'm sorry, but the Chrono series, wonderful though it is, can't compete.
(Yes, this is a quick and sloppy answer. Bite me.)
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Personal opinion, Shakespeare can go jump in a lake.
Chrono hands down. Excellent story that conquers for many reasons. Characterization, I don't think they were THAT deep. I still say Chrono there. Call me ignorant, I stand by my decision.
Edit: This also seems like a wierd Chrono VS Topic. I've seen plenty, and this has to take 2nd place for wierdest but good idea! (sorry you're not 1st, that one goes to Chrono VS the EMPIAH! WTF?)
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Yeah characterization seems more likely to be better in Shakespeare but I'd debate some of his plays on that. But script means nothing to me. I care more about plot.
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To the right of "New Topic" is "Post New Poll", which is what you needed to click in order to create a poll topic (go fig). If you want you can create a new poll and we can merge them I suppose...
Anyways, I'm not a Shakespeare fan, myself. He needed to stick with comedy, everything else seemed rather groan-worthy and left me rolling my eyes. Though, to be fair, I'm not as familiar with his works as I am with Chrono, I still gotta give it up for the series...*shrugs*
Hamlet 2 was cool, does that count? :lol:
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Shakespeare is pretty funny. Most of what he wrote was sexual innuendo (http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-shakespeare-would-write-for-cracked-if-he-were-alive-today/), and his work wasn't even considered good until after he died.
I think the mediums and styles of Chrono and Shakespeare are far too different to really compare them like thought. I prefer CT myself, because I'm not really up to date with older english phrases.
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I think the mediums and styles of Chrono and Shakespeare are far too different to really compare them like thought.
I'd have to agree.
I liked Julius Caesar and Macbeth(probably because I'm a history nut) and Hamlet, but that's about it. Shakespeare was way too boring for me otherwise.
If you're asking me which one I'd rather read a story/script by....Kato.
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I recently took a Shakespeare class. The dialogue made it difficult (for me, anyways) to discern a lot of the plot. I like his plays, don't get me wrong on that. I really liked "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "Much Ado About Nothing".
On the other hand, the Chrono series, with its titillating characters, its equally titillating storyline, and its multi-verse worlds, caught me up more than any Shakespeare play has done to date. Guilty as charged, I suppose.
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Are you serious? You are saying that the Chrono series is better than Shakespeare?
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That is really odd. I'm not going to be rude and call you an ignorant dumbass, but comparing the two is just... well, incomprehensible to me. I think it's because you are young and don't appreciate true literature.
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Yeah...or maybe it's all relative. Shakespeare isn't the be-all & end-all perfect example of literary wordsmithery or anything, but maybe me using 'wordsmithery' proves your point somewhat. :lol:
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...RUN THROUGH FIRE WILL I, FOR THY SWEET SAKE! (http://www.grandwl.info/catalog/images/GekkeikanSake.jpg)
That was a scene from "Lysander does Japan," the upcoming work of Masato Shakespeare, the artist formerly known as William Kato. Featuring Kid in Tokyo, with a dimensional-crossing Bottom serving as her guide for comic relief. Supposedly there is a cast of thousands, though critics are already panning their lack of character development in the play and the amount of story shoved into the third act.
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I'm not going to be rude and call you an ignorant dumbass, but comparing the two is just... well, incomprehensible to me. I think it's because you are young and don't appreciate true literature.
I'm not calling the Chrono series greater than Shakespeare's work. I just found the Chrono series more enticing to my literary palette than Shakespeare. Sometimes, I like to muse upon his comedies, like "Taming of the Shrew".
As for being young... well, you're as young as you feel.
"True literature"? By what standard are you placing this statement? My idea of great literature may not equal your idea of great literature, but as an English Major, I have that much more confidence in my judgment of literary critique.
Disagree if you must, but I would never second-guess my ability to appreciate literature, true or otherwise.
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I didn't even know you were a lit major. Sorry. I hate most lit. Anything written before the turn of the century (as in the 20th), I most likely really dislike. I make a noble exception for Shakespeare : ). I love everything of his that I've read... though some more than others. I don't like most of his comedies as much as the tragedies. Maybe it's just cuz I like melodramas a lot.
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Well, ZaichiArky, here are a list of books that inspired me to become somewhat of a sci-fi enthusiast:
Journey to the Center of the Earth (1871)
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1872)
Around the World In 80 Days (1873)
The Time Machine (1895)
The Invisible Man (1897)
The War of the Worlds (1898)
All of which have captivated me more than any novel written in the 21st century (to date) or 20th century.
Isn't classic literature fascinating or what?
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20,000 Leagues is great...or, well, Nemo is anyways (Journey disappointed me because it didn't seem to have a character near as great, but I need to give it another chance sometime)...I thought War of the Worlds was incredibly boring though I want to give The Invisible Man a chance...
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If it helps, V, read the Great Illustrated Classic edition of the novel.
Don't get me wrong. I read the original novel, but I always had some trouble visualizing the story world.
Thank goodness somebody wanted to be an artist for such books.
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Whats the name of the book where its a comedy science fiction book. they land on a planet where robots kill all humans on sight, but then they figure out that there were no robots, everyone was a human in disguise. the people in disguise didn't even know that everyone else was a human. I liked that novel whatever its called.
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Don't know, ZealKnight. The only sci-fi comedy book I know of is The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and its sequels.
Post your question on Yahoo! Answers. It's been really helpful to me in the past.
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Yeah, I'm a pretty big sci fi nut. I was considering reading some of the ancient classical sci fi. I read War of the Worlds. It was ok. I liked how the guy described the aliens. One exception to the hating almost all literature before the turn of the century is that I was really really enjoyed Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. I even read it twice. Hm, probably because it was a melodrama! HAH. It was more of a melodrama than a sci fi, really, but I count that as one of the first sci fi books ever written.
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Well, in essence, science fiction speaks about the potential of the future of science and the goals we hope to someday achieve with its continued application in society. In the case of Frankenstein, it speaks about the potential to bring back to life what was once dead.
In "2001", it was the potential of space travel to find a means to achieve some form of immortality.
In "War of the Worlds", it was the potential of visitation of beings from another planet.
Any sci-fi book worth its weight in pages will always have a good potential in its plot.
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The thing with ol' Shakespeare is his words. No one ever talked in Shakespearean English, but he is such a master of words that he can make it feel like they might have.
Regarding Sci-Fi (or Science Fiction, as Sci-Fi apparently can designante a particular subgenre), there is a book I'd highly recommend if only I could confirm that it exists. I think the title of it is "A Century of Science Fiction" but I can't seem to find it on Amazon. It was a fabulous book that gave a by decade breakdown of science fiction history (about 2-3 pages of history for each decade) and then followed it up with several stories selected from that era. Hmm... when I get home I'll see about consulting my "list." Having over 900 books, it is easy to loose track of names.
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The thing with ol' Shakespeare is his words. No one ever talked in Shakespearean English, but he is such a master of words that he can make it feel like they might have.
O, calumny! Roguish fool! Whilst our intrepidities yet endure a'gainst thy ill-cornered fabrications, I pray thou fix't thine attentions forthwith upon these matters which are in the interests of historie: For sooth, it is that in days of yor our tunges were not aught cluckethed in the sensyble moderne sophistryes whereunto our present plentie abides these railleryes shar'd between friends, but with decorum and sanctytee befitting the charactre of those tymes, so ably captured immortale by our dear Bard, William Shakespeare, whose words liveth and thriveth unto our own daye. If to'ward these enduring verities thou in thy persistitude would yet incredyulate, against all reason, I would counseil thee: Were it not so that these be the words of long ago, then surely our current tele-vision comedies and video gaymes would so e'labor themselves of re-creating a fantast! Now I put it to thee: What babel!
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Oh don't get me started on faux Old English. I foam at the mouth every time I hear someone say "Ye Olde ____ Shoppe." The e's were silent and that isn't a y, that's a thorn! Yarblagablaga! It's all so simple, if people just know there linguistics!
Ahem, not then: I was specifically referring to the poetic nature of Shakespeare's words. People copy the rags in which the poetry is clothed and mistake it for the heart of the matter.
Side note:
... I pray thou fix't thine attentions forthwith upon these matters which are in the interests of historie...
I'm fairly sure that should be "I pray thee..." If I recall correctly, "thou" is the nominitive case while you want the dative, here.
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Actually, Thought, Shakespeare is Modern English. In addition, Middle English was the language of Chaucer and Malory and was well before Shakespeare, starting after the Norman Conquest (1066 A.D. and so on).
Old English is the language of the Venerable Bede and was before Middle English. Ergo, Lord J Esq was speaking in Modern English, given 400 years of shift and invention to the English vernacular.
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/73/The_More_You_Know.jpg)
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Old English is also known as Anglo-Saxon, the language in which many beautiful literary works were composed or recorded, such as Beowulf, the Law Codes of King Aethelbert of Kent, Genesis B, a particularly interesting form of Judith, the Wanderer, and many others.
Anglo-Saxon (which is a bit of a more correct term, since it was not limited to England as the name "Old English" might imply) of course being a branch of the Proto-Indo European language group (PIE, the best academic acronym there is), sharing roots with languages like Latin. This gives modern English a curious linguistic position as both a derivative and cognate language to Latin. A-S went out of fashion with the coming of the French-speaking Normans, but it made a lovely comeback, albeit in a significantly different form, when the Normans finally were well assimilated. At that point the language rapidly barrowed words from Latin so as to fulfill the role of intellectual discourse (of course, most intellectuals knowing Latin, a form of French, and English).
Thus modern English has the oddity of having Latin and Germanic-via-A-S words side by side (king and regicide, for example). It is neither a largely cognate language, such as German, nor a largely derivative language, such as French.
Anywho, I will endeavor to ensure that the next time I use the phrase "Old English" I keep in mind that I ought to assume an academic, rather than lay, audience, and thus be more careful with my terminology.
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IMost of the time I hear that his writing wasn't great he just knew his audience, which was retarded.
You mean like Stephanie Meyer who wrote the single worst thing put on paper (aside from Evangelion fanfiction) but knew her audience was a bunch of dumb teenage girls so it sold like hotcakes covered in white china heroin?
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pretty much
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I'm not a big fan of Shakespeare.
I'm not a big fan of the way the characters talk.
I also find his stories to be boring.
I think that Shakespeare is meant to appeal to classy people.
With Chrono you get cool characters who go though character development, and a interesting story.
With Shakespeare all I got was bored reading though his stuff.
Well that's my opinion anyway.
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I'm not a big fan of Shakespeare.
I'm not a big fan of the way the characters talk.
I also find his stories to be boring.
I think that Shakespeare is meant to appeal to classy people.
With Chrono you get cool characters who go though character development, and a interesting story.
With Shakespeare all I got was bored reading though his stuff.
Well that's my opinion anyway.
I respect his stuff, but it's hard for me to like it. It was made for a different culture. And things like character development have come a very long way since them, so you really shouldn't compare the two.
Given the choice, I'd choose Chrono though.
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I'm not a big fan of Shakespeare.
I'm not a big fan of the way the characters talk.
I also find his stories to be boring.
I think that Shakespeare is meant to appeal to classy people.
With Chrono you get cool characters who go though character development, and a interesting story.
With Shakespeare all I got was bored reading though his stuff.
Well that's my opinion anyway.
I don't really know what "classy people" means. I wouldn't really consider myself "classy", and I like Shakespeare.
What plays / sonnets of his have you read? The language can be a bit difficult to understand at first, and I understand that not everyone likes Shakespeare, but I think you should give him another chance. Some of the things he says in his plays are just downright fucking hilarious--even by today's standards. He was a pretty bawdy character, that ol' Willy Shakespeare. :)
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I remember reading Shakespeare back when I was really little and actually understanding it really well. I started reading and writing well before pre-school so I tended to comprehend literature at a much faster pace than my peers. I remember during in-class readings I would have finished half of the short story we'd be reading in the time it took for one of my peers to read a paragraph of it out loud. So I was an advanced reader, but I don't think Shakespeare should be too difficult to understand if one has at least graduated high school.
I read a lot of Shakespeare plays when I was young and he is definitely one of my favorite authors. The stories are criticzed by just about everybody on the planet, but at the end of the day I still find them to be great stories with great characters and superb writing. The characters are very real and that's why it's fun to pick apart the romance between Romeo and Juliet as being "stupid teenage love" but there's also a sincerity to "stupid teenage love" that we all admire. I think the man was brilliant with striking emotional chords. And as far as writing for an "upper class" audience, anyone who knows theater history knows that good deal of the audience were lower-class working folks and the upper class (the upper class were in balconies and the lower class in the pit) and it was considered the primary means of entertainment for the mass of society much in the same way that cinema is. Rich people go to see movies just like you and I do. So it isn't a class issue, it just may be an issue of understainding the context of the time where the works came out, the evolution of language over the years and the fact that he wrote each line of dialouge as if it were a God-damned poem.
Are his works better than the Chrono series? Eh...It really is an apples to oranges type of comparison. Old Willy has created some very cool characters (just about everyone in Macbeth is a classic character) and I really enjoy the plots to many of his stories. I like them both and don't want to choose one over the other. Both are great.
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I went through a big Shakespeare phase- by big, I mean that I read four plays of his: Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Othello and 12th Night.
Each of these (especially the first three) was a major undertaking and I quickly began to prefer editions with many liner notes so that I could understand more of the connotations of Shakespeare's expressions. I loved his language, much more than the English we speak these days. And while it is true that the plots are often simple or trite when summarized, they provide the context for powerful characterization- I do not see the point in a plot if the script does not bring it and its characters to life. Yes, it is true that Iago's motivations are unclear and seem more like a plot device than anything else. Nonetheless, I suffered for Othello and Desdemona as I saw the former be betrayed in that his heart was poisoned more and more by a trusted compagnon. I suffered myself, really, as I felt helpless to prevent the inevitable tragedy- I suffered, while reading a play in book format- with no background music or images before me. That is powerful characterization.
I love the Chrono series. Cross in particular has a very unique and beautiful atmosphere through the images, music and spontaneity and individuality of the plot and characters. But as much as I am fond of all of that, or of the character of Kid or Glenn or Nikki or Fargo... not one of them is presented as powerfully or as thought-provokingly as Othello or Hamlet. Not one of them makes a speech as ravishing as that of Marc Antony denouncing Brutus and his followers. Not one of their tragedies cuts so deep and as the death of Desdemona or leaves one with such a sense of futility as that of Hamlet.
However, I would also like to take this opportunity to mention that people who are able to appreciate the plot of the Chrono series have a somewhat rare openness about them. In Shakespeare's time, most if not everyone would have held such a plot for nonsense- and most people today are the same. What, magical kingdoms on floating islands in the dark ages? dimension splits and doppelgängers? It's easy for them to dismiss these things as gimmicky fluff- however, the fans themselves appreciate this inventiveness and the heart behind it.
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Hi, sorry, this is my first post here.
I'll give my 2 cents. Chrono Trigger for me is similar to Shakespeare in that in some instances it is whittled down to the change and analysis of one person. The story of Macbeth and the Story of Chrono. I could go on and on comparing how the two are similar. You also have the "my kingdom for a horse!" classic line, which is analogous to how Zeal was willing to sacrifice everything to save themselves and in the end it cost them everything they had. The dream of one man wanting to change the world for their own desires, such as Janus. So in a way, given how kids have trouble translating the age old language of Shakespeare, I could see Chrono Trigger as a "tales for the l33t" type modern version of telling similar stories. In the same way lots of children's books are basic lessons found in the bible, some are simpler mediums for people. Shakespeare wrote a lot, and yeah maybe some of it was plagarized, but the show Roots was finally found to be plagarized, but fake or not, its shown as a representation of what slavery was like. Shakespeare's stories whether his or someone else's exist to teach, and if the goal is representative of the TIME in which he wrote, then it has a stronger merit for such a class. But if you were teaching these stories, I see Chrono Trigger as a good medium if not a more enjoyable and modern (easier to understand) for our current generation. Maybe in several hundred years, when the copyrights are worn out, we can teach and show Chrono Trigger in schools as classical literature.
EDIT: holy crap this forum is fussy for posting