Show Notes

• What Is a Turning Point?
• Types of Turning Points  
• Star Wars Climax 
• Buffy The Vampire Slayer 
• Waymond 
• Dormammu 
• Technobabble 
• Three Parts Dead 
• One Dark Window
• Red Rising 
• Wax On, Was Off
• Age of Ultron
• Fury Road 
• I Have the High Ground

Transcript

Generously transcribed by Michael Martin. Volunteer to transcribe a podcast.

Chris: You’re listening to the Mythcreants podcast with your hosts Oren Ashkenazi, Chris Winkle, and Bunny. 

[opening song]

Oren: And welcome everyone to another episode of the Mythcreants podcast. I’m Oren and with me today is…

Chris:  Chris. 

Oren: And…

Bunny: Bunny. 

Oren: So we’re about to defeat the big bad, but we can’t just do that by sword fighting better. Right? Something should happen. Maybe I’ll give a little speech about how we’re gonna win ’cause we’re all full of determination.

Bunny: Yeah. I could use a pick me up. 

Oren: Yeah, just a little pep talk and everyone will feel great and then we’ll win. It’ll be very satisfying. 

Bunny: I need to be roused a bit. Yeah. 

Oren: Maybe I’ll say something dramatic like, “Now it’s war.” 

Bunny: Whoa. 

Chris: [Deadpan] Wow. I didn’t know it was war.

Oren: [Laughs]

 Bunny: That’s pretty deep. 

Chris: But now that I know it’s a war, it’s just totally different. Changes everything for me. I think I’ve got more spunk now.  

Oren: Yeah. People will be like, “How is war different from what we were doing before?” And I’ll never tell.

Bunny: [Laughs] Yeah. My sword seems spunkier too. I don’t know.

Oren: Yeah. That’s great. So we’re talking about common turning point problems today. ‘Cause turning points—they’re a really important concept in storytelling to the point that a lot of writers instinctively know there should be something there, some kind of ‘extra oomph’ that gives the heroes the edge to win or makes them fail if you’re going for an unsuccessful resolution. But because the concept is very rarely articulated, there are a lot of mistakes. 

Chris: Yep. Including just not having them.

Oren: Sometimes they are just missing. They’re definitely one of the ones that I see people try to do incorrectly more often than other concepts that we cover. ‘Cause before Chris wrote her article about turning points, like, I knew there had to be something. And in my head I called it, like, the ‘extra oomph,’ which is not a great term. 

Bunny: Copyright. Trademark. Do not steal.

Chris: Very specific. That’s exactly what to do.

All: [Laughter] 

Chris: What you need is that Dragon Ball Z power to power up. That’s it right there.

Oren: Yeah. Where they just yell. Oh man. I rewatched some of Dragon Ball Z for nostalgia recently. I’d forgotten how much grunting there is.

Chris: [Laughs] That’s what you need. That’s the ‘oomph.’ You gotta grunt.

Bunny: Yeah [Laughs]. It’s literally ‘oomph.’

Oren: Although the scene that I watched did have a turning point, it was just not a good one. It was an interesting example of a bad turning point, ’cause the writer knew there should be one, but didn’t know how to set one up very well. And in this case, it was a turning point where it just raised the question of, okay, I guess that was a clever deduction. You figured out how you could use your moves that way. Why don’t they do that every time now? Because he, like, figured out he could teleport to a place where the enemy wouldn’t be expecting it using his teleportation move and then blast him where his guard was down. Which makes sense. 

Bunny: But is that clever?

Oren: It’s not great, right? It raises the question of why they aren’t just always doing that. 

Bunny: That would be the first thing I do with my teleportation powers.

Chris: Let’s back up and talk about what a turning point is.

Oren: If we must.

Bunny: Oh, oh! I know, I know. 

Oren: Oh yeah.

Chris: Okay. 

Bunny: It’s when you miss your exit on the highway and then you have to find a turning point, which is a problem, ’cause you don’t know that stretch of highway. Right? 

Oren: Yeah. It’s that crisis when you get a reroute on your mapping app.

Oren: Sometimes you take an exit assuming you can just cross over and get back on the highway, but that exit takes you to another highway and now you’re in Eastern Washington suddenly.

Bunny: No! 

Chris: So turning points: what are they? Just in case we have one person who has not listened to this podcast before. So, basically a typical plot arc or plotline starts with a problem and ends with a resolution to that problem. So, problem: “Oh no! The Empire has built the Death Star, which can destroy planets.” And then the resolution: “Oh, we’ve destroyed the Death Star. But it could also be, like, “The Death Star has destroyed all of the planets.”

Oren: There are no more planets!  

Chris: That would be a hard one, because to resolve things in a tragic manner you have to have that the worst has already happened. Right? There’s no possibility for hope left.

Bunny: I thought you were gonna say that’s a hard one, ’cause there’s a lot of planets.

Chris: [Laughs] There are a lot of planets. So, the Death Star’s pretty much gonna be threatening and create the sense of tension, which keeps that plotline going until it’s destroyed all of the planets.

Oren: Well, in Star Wars—probably—it would’ve been, I think, not too hard because we imply that the, like, Rebellion is like the only hope for stopping the Empire. And they all live on this one moon. So the Death Star doesn’t have to destroy every planet, just that one. And then that would’ve been a negative resolution. Good guys lose. Everyone’s sad.

Chris: Right. If we’re talking about the threat actually being the Empire, and the Empire is gonna use this Death Star to take control, right? Once the Rebellion is completely quashed and the Empire has complete control, and doesn’t need the Death Star to destroy planets to intimidate people anymore we could say that that might be a way of permanently resolving it in a tragic direction.

But in any case, for that ending to be satisfying you can’t just have the resolution happen in any way that you want. It has to come out in a specific way, which means the protagonist has to do something to earn that resolution. And they can do it in a positive way or a negative way. They can have an action that we would say earns them good karma, which means it feels like they deserve something good. They’ve earned something good and then you have success.

Luke trusted in the force. That’s the thing that he did that was good and now the Death Star is destroyed. Or they can do something that makes it feel like they’ve earned a tragic ending if we have a tragedy. Which is, of course, less common at the climax. But you can still do that. And you can have multiple turning points if you want.

But basically, we have a specific moment that for the story, all for all, it’s gonna be at the climax. But arcs aren’t just at the climax, right? They’re all over in the story. So you can have a smaller conflict. That smaller conflict will still have a turning point. It’ll just be less impressive. And that will determine how the conflict goes and whether the protagonist succeeds or fails, usually. And it’s that one moment that makes it feel like that has been earned.

Oren: Yeah. And you’re usually having the character demonstrate some aspect of cleverness, selflessness, or perseverance. There are others, but those are, like, the most common. And that shows both how the protagonist was able to win and also why they deserve to win. ‘Cause it’s just not satisfying if they just win by being really good at stuff. Or by, in the Dragon Ball Z case, figuring out a pretty obvious exploit to these two moves they have.

Chris: So, they do something that, for instance, makes it feel like they earn a good ending. And it has to be the cause. That’s the other thing. Has to be a clear cause and effect where they persevered, and because they persevered in an impressive way—not just in a normal way, in an impressive way. That’s why they succeeded. Or they were impressively clever and that’s why they succeeded.

So, that causality has to be there for it to work. And yeah, some people do not like the simplicity of the good karma versus bad karma, and … I but…Sorry I didn’t make that up. That’s just how it works.

All: [Laughter]

We’re just describing what we’re seeing here. We’re not being prescriptive on this one.

Bunny: As we established, Chris speaks nothing but facts.

Chris & Oren: [Laughter] 

Chris: But you could have multiple—if you wanna make a more complex story—you could have multiple turning points that go, and one of them can be happy and one of them can be tragic. And there’s still ways to have complexity and ambiguity in your story if you want that. It’s … you just, you know. A turning point has either a … sort of a positive or a negative charge. And that’s how it goes.

Oren: Yeah. And if, look, if you wanna have your character do everything wrong and still win; I mean, I can’t stop you, right? Like, we’re not gonna tell you you can’t do that. It’s just not gonna go well.

Chris: Right. I mean, mostly we want people to know how it’s likely to affect the audience. It’s, like, people will be unhappy, but if it’s your, like, art piece and you’re cool with that … Right? I’m not gonna say that’s bad, right? Just want you to know what effect you’re probably gonna have on the audience, that’s all.

Bunny: Fly free, little bird.

Oren: That joke we were making earlier about giving a speech is an interesting example of a case where a writer knows there should be a turning point, but doesn’t know how to make one. And this was very common in the last season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. There are just, I think, half a dozen times.

Chris: Okay. So, a speech can be a turning point.

Oren: Yes.

Chris: Let’s not say that a speech is not necessarily a turning point. But, just because somebody gives a speech doesn’t mean it’s a good turning point. Do continue.

Oren: That’s the thing: it’s that close, right? Because it could be perseverance. And I think that’s what it’s supposed to be when they’re all beaten down and Buffy’s like, “No, we are gonna win and we are going to defeat the bad guy.” The problem is that the turning point is in the wrong place because that speech could be a decent turning point for the team wanting to give up. Like, they want to give up, they don’t wanna fight anymore and Buffy gives a speech. And they, like, show perseverance and they don’t give up. That could work. But they’re used to explain how the team is now able to defeat an enemy that Buffy could not defeat before. And that’s where it breaks down, right? There’s no connection between the speech and why we were able to beat the super vampire this time.

Chris: ‘Cause it doesn’t require the team. She’s just doing it by herself. She’s doing exactly what she did before and for some reason this time she succeeds. And I think that is probably, especially in popular media, the most common mistake I see. It’s that the protagonist fails and fails, and then suddenly they succeed. And it’s like, well, why did they succeed this time. Right? We haven’t demonstrated that anything changed.

Bunny: They were … better.

Oren & Chris: [Chuckling]

Bunny: They fought, and then they fought better and won. 

Chris: It’s like they didn’t have enough spunk before. Now they do for some reason. Sometimes I also refer to this as the ‘emergency mode turning point’ where the idea is that the character fails and fails. And then when it matters, they succeed. So when they’re suddenly faced with a crisis and life or death is on the line, they do the same thing. And this time they just do it just fine. 

And again, I feel like that could work if we filled in a reason why being backed into a corner and having lives on the line makes a difference to the character. So if they were lacking in resolve before and we showed that, and then having a crisis causes them to really rally and show that kind of perseverance and … we could do something like that. But usually that’s not what happens. 

I mean, again, I do have some sympathy with storytellers in visual mediums that have a little bit harder time flushing out what is happening inside the character. Because I think to a certain degree a lot of turning points, they feel very about what is inside, and what the character’s thinking and feeling. And those things are just hard to show without any kind of internal narration. 

Bunny: I was trying to think of turning points where a speech does work. And one that came to mind was Waymond’s speech at the end of Everything Everywhere All at Once, which critically is not how Evelyn, the main character, defeats the villain in this case. Because, not to spoil too much, but she doesn’t really defeat the villain. She gives the villain a hug essentially, and things become all right again. But, if I’m remembering this correctly, Evelyn is teetering on the edge of nihilism, becoming like her daughter, who has essentially become this nihilistic, universe-spanning thing that’s built a donut that’s destroying everything. Don’t worry.

Oren: Excuse me. It’s a bagel.

Bunny: Oh, that’s right. It’s a bagel.

Oren: Uh, pardon you.

Oren & Bunny: [Laughter]

Chris: Yeah. Isn’t it an everything bagel?

Bunny: It’s an everything bagel. It’s a bagel with everything on it. 

Chris: [Chuckles] It’s ‘everything’ is the entire universe is on the bagel.

Oren: It has the power of bagel puns.

Bunny: [Laughs] The donut is from the other good movie, which is Knives Out. So, I’m getting them confused. And then Waymond is like, “Please.” And he comes up and this is … you know. Evelyn throughout the entire movie has been pretty dismissive of her version of Waymond. She thinks he’s kind of pathetic. And then he comes up and he’s like, “Please, be kind.” Like, “Stop doing this,” essentially. And that pulls Evelyn back from the edge of nihilism. 

So, I think that’s a turning point that kind of works where she realizes that, no; Waymond’s optimism and what she’s interpreted as naïveté has validity. And that allows her to defeat the nihilism in her daughter.

Oren: And that’s, like, a perfect example, because the issue in that scene is that Evelyn is about to give up. And so we have Waymond, and everyone loves Waymond. It’s true.

Bunny: Everyone loves Waymond.

Oren: Who has the superpower of perseverance and inspires Evelyn to keep going, right? So that’s the perfect turning point for a speech of some kind.

Bunny: Jobu! That’s the name. I was like—I kept thinking Dormammu and I was like, that is not it.

Oren: No, that’s from Dr. Strange.

Bunny: Jobu.

Oren: The turning point in Dr. Strange is also very funny, ’cause it’s like it’s supposed to be a clever deduction where he figures out he can use his superpower time stone to do an infinite time loop on the bad guy. But it’s like, okay, how did you figure that out and why can’t you do it on anyone else?

Bunny: Look, that’s easy. Every Computer Science 101 student accidentally writes a wild loop without a break function.

Oren: Yeah, it just happens sometimes.

Chris: Which reminds me of another common problem I see when the audience cannot follow the reasoning of the clever deduction or can’t follow what’s happening. So they have no understanding of how this turning point worked. 

And this generally happens with either technology or magic. Technobabble or magic babble, in most cases, it’s all nonsense to the audience. So basically the storyteller’s just declaring by fiat that, “Oh, they were clever.” Which is not particularly satisfying, right? We expect there to be foreshadowing. We expect to be able to understand and see, oh yeah. See for ourselves. How impressive, you know, putting the clues together was and coming up with this new insight. I’ve called it the ‘clever ex machina,’ because it really is just a thing the storyteller made up on the spot. Or could be. Might as well be if you can’t follow it.

Bunny: “We can reveal the anomaly source by creating a phase-induced reverse particle beam and bouncing it off of the deflector dish while we eat pretzels.”

Oren: That language always confused me, ’cause they say bounce it off of the deflector dish. So, it isn’t emitted from the deflector dish? Where is it coming from? It’s being deflected.

Bunny: That’s why it’s called a deflector dish.

Oren: Where are they shooting the beam from to hit the deflector dish? Is there some other part of the ship that has this beam on it? I have questions.

Bunny: The afflicter dish.

Oren: [Chuckles]

Chris: That’s true. It’s like, it’s going out in space, right? What is reflecting it back so that it hits the deflector dish?

All: [Laughter]

Oren: That issue can be one of two things. One is it can just be complete nonsense, right? Like Star Trek, technobabble is nonsense. There is no rhyme or reason to it. They make it up for every new episode. Or it could be something that, in theory, does make sense, but is simply beyond your capacity as a writer to explain in a way that doesn’t confuse a good percentage of your readers. And I would argue in most cases those are functionally the same. Like, I remember the end of Three Parts Dead—this isn’t exactly a turning point, but it’s close enough—when the bad guy is, like, explaining his evil plan. And I’m like, okay. I think that makes sense if I, like, stop and listen to it again and take some notes and create, like, a flow chart of who was doing what at what time. But I think for most people, they’re just gonna be like, “What are … what are you talking about?”

All: [Laughter]

Bunny: It’s a lot of work to go back and check.

Oren: Yeah. So, be careful with that. Even if you take your audience to court and prove that your ending does make sense, if they didn’t get it the experience is gonna be the same.  

Chris: Another one that can happen is just the karmic action not being exceptional enough. If what the character does … And again, if this is just for a small conflict within the story it doesn’t have to be super exceptional, right? Just one idea for how to solve the problem is usually fine, or one simple act of kindness, or what have you. It doesn’t have to be super exceptional, but the bigger the arc is, the more exciting that climactic scene is, the more you have to do something impressive. And if it’s not impressive enough, like for instance a clever deduction for something that seems obvious, then that becomes a problem.

A recent instance I saw—spoilers for One Dark Window, which is a dark romantasy—There’s what should be a sacrifice turning point at the end where the protagonist decides that she is going to give over control of herself to this, like, monster that’s possessing her, right? With a request that the monster help her love interest, but she’s gonna kinda lose herself to this monster that’s possessing her. And in most cases that would be just fine as a turning point. The problem is that she solves every turning point, like, every problem in the story that way.

So she is continually asking the monster to do things for her and it takes her a surprisingly long time to catch on that she’s actually—the monster’s getting more control over her every time she asks, even though it’s obvious.

Oren: I kept forgetting that she was supposed to not know that. Like, it’s so obvious. They keep saying that magic has a price. Every other paragraph they say that and it just never occurred to her.

Chris: Like at one point she asked for the monster to give her night vision because she just wakes up in the morning while it’s still dark. And it’s just like, really? Anyway, she keeps doing it after she knows. I think that one even comes after she knows.

Bunny: Yeah. Just get a flashlight.

Chris: Yeah.

Bunny: Use your phone. We all carry around phones with flashlights.

Chris: I mean, it’s fantasy. But she can light a little candle or something. So after she solves every problem that way, it’s not exceptional enough once we get to the climax anymore. So, it just doesn’t feel like a turning point that she’s earned. So, I would say again, another reason to vary your turning points and vary the ways that your protagonist solves conflicts throughout the story.

Oren: Another thing that was wrong with that turning point was just that the implication that it gave—because she used that ability so freely and, like, without any thought to the consequences—it made it seem like a foregone conclusion that this monster was gonna take her over, because she apparently just has no self-control. So, like, when she does it in the climax it’s like, okay. I mean, I guess it might as well happen here as opposed to some other time.

Chris: Maybe she’s, like, giving up a week.

Oren: Yeah, maybe. Before she needs to see in the dark again, right?

Bunny: Just stumble around and bang your shins on things like the rest of us.

Oren: [Deadpan] It was like, “Ah, minor inconvenience. I guess it’s time to be possessed.”

Oren & Bunny: [Chuckling]

Chris: I think this is also a reason why it’s really important that things seem hard enough and difficult enough at an important turning point like the story’s climax. And just the more difficult it is and the more they have to struggle, usually for the turning point to work, the better it works out. Now, I think some storytellers just put in the struggle and don’t know what else to do. But, you know, that does help.

Oren: And of course, even if that turning point had been good, the repetition at a certain point—this is a little less common, but I’ve seen it twice now; there was One Dark Window, like we mentioned, and then I critiqued Red Rising for this problem, where every single conflict is resolved via a hidden plan. Where we just reveal, yeah. The hero, he had a plan this whole time. He just didn’t tell you what it was. And it’s like, okay. The first time that was kind of cool. But then afterwards, the second, third, fourth and fifth times, it’s just like, all right. Now I just know there’s no danger. Because every danger that arrives, the hero will have a plan for it. 

Chris: Yeah. And just to be specific, the hidden plan is what we call—it’s very popular in heist movies, where it looks like everything is going wrong and then it turns out that everything has actually been going according to the hero’s plan. So they were never really in any danger. You just thought they were. And so as soon as they revealed your plan, everything suddenly goes their way. And so it doesn’t lend itself to a terribly exciting climax. And you have to use sleight of hand to be like, oh yeah. They looked like they were struggling.

Oren: And there are ways to do a hidden plan that’s not quite that, like, everything-was-going-the-way-I-wanted-it-to. A hidden plan can be, like, a small thing you had planned that might not work or whatever. And then it feels a little bit less like, oh, well I guess there was never any danger to begin with.

There is a strong temptation to make it like, “Actually we were always going to win because I was playing nine-dimensional chess.” But, it doesn’t have to be that way. 

Bunny: I gotta say one of the worst kinds of hidden plan, or I guess maybe prior achievement turning points, I’ve ever seen is—and this happens multiple times in this movie, which is Now You See Me … and all of the problems turned out to have been solved before the movie started.

Oren: Well, that’s nice. [Chuckles]

Bunny: So, they perform a magic trick and you’re like, “Wow, how’d they do that?” It turns out they robbed a bank, like, months ago, and that’s why there’s money coming from the ceiling now. 

Chris: [Laughing] That definitely sounds like a ‘deus ex machina’ at that point.

Bunny: I mean, you could just tell whoever wrote it was just so impressed by these characters being so smart that we can’t have them be smart on screen. They have to have done everything like weeks in advance before the movie started. Incredibly frustrating.

Chris: I should probably specify what is … when you say prior achievement. So, we talk about this turning point having a kind of karmic action by the protagonist that is the cause of the resolution. But actually, the karmic action can take place before the climax. It can take place much, much earlier in the story and then we can reveal—

Bunny: —But it has to take place in the story!

Chris: Yeah. It does have to take place in the story.

Bunny: Not years ago. I saved someone long before the story started.

Chris: But the key is that they have to actually earn the good karma. We have to see them earn that good karma. I’m assuming this is a happy ending earlier in the story. And they have to be … get no reward for it, right? So, it’s almost like they still have that positive balance, right? They’re still owed something for doing something good in the audience’s mind. And then we can connect it to the outcome at the climax. Right?

So this is what we do with the characters that, like, you know, doing the training montage where they’re like, “Hey, you just need to learn your basic footwork” or “your basic breathing.” And the protagonist doing the training is like, “Oh, but that’s boring. I wanna do flashy moves!” But then they do it right and they put all that work in, and it never seems to matter until the climax when they’re, like, exceptional, extremely basic thing like breathing or footwork wins them the day. 

Bunny: “Wax on, wax off.”

Chris: So that would be … “Wax on. Wax off.” Exactly. So, that’s what we’re talking about. But yes, you have to actually earn that good karma early in the story. And again, the protagonist has to not get any prior reward for it or else it doesn’t work. It’s already paid off, essentially.

Oren: Yeah. And this is, like, a big way that you manage to do the, like, surprise reinforcements trope in a way that doesn’t feel like a ‘deus ex machina.’ Like, you have your protagonist take a big risk or incur some cost to help someone, and then later that person, like, shows up and returns the favor. And yeah, that feels satisfying. That was earned. 

One of my favorites is what I’ve started calling the unrelated virtue. Where the characters do something that’s like, oh wow, that’s a cool thing they did. And then they win. But there’s no connection between the things. Like, the most stark example is from Age of Ultron, where the city they’re on is falling to earth and everyone’s gonna die and they can’t evacuate everyone in time. And so the heroes are like, “Okay, we could leave, but we’re gonna stay and face our fate with the civilians.” And it’s supposed to be like a really noble moment.

Chris: It’s like, why? 

Oren: And I would certainly argue it’s not really noble because it’s not like them staying there is helping. It’s not like they’re giving up their seat on the last transport.

Chris: I don’t think they’re the captain of this ship as far as I know.

Bunny: Oh, he is the captain of America though.

Oren: So, there’s that problem. But even if they were right, even if it was like, no, Iron Man takes off his jet pack and gives it to a kid so the kid can escape or something, what then happens is that Nick Fury shows up with a helicopter—or excuse me, a helicarrier—and evacuates everyone. But, like, he would’ve showed up anyway. Like, if they had left, he would’ve shown up and they would’ve been like, I don’t know, thirty feet away from the city and been like, “Oh. Hey Nick. Thanks for bringing that.” And then turned around.

Chris: Yeah, so the causality is missing there.

Oren: Yeah.

Chris: It seems complicated, like how your protagonists do something incredible that directly causes their success. But once you witness enough of them, once you watch enough stories, you’ll see that usually there’s a way to do it that is not too difficult, that matches whatever you’re doing with your story.

Oren: And one that authors tend to fall back on a lot is just telling you that their character’s putting in special effort. Like to win this race I ran harder than I usually do. You gotta be more specific than that and sometimes it can be very simple. There’s a classic moment where the character has, like, a rifle and is trying to line up a difficult shot, and they, like, take a moment to pause, breathe, and then take the shot. And that’ll often do it, right? Because that’s them showing wisdom in not taking the shot too fast and risking losing their target.

Chris: And I think the discipline—I think that kind of ties into the perseverance. The fact that they have to keep themselves from panicking in the moment and show kind of discipline. I feel like that kind of strength of will … I mean, I don’t really like the word ‘strength of will’ because I feel like it feeds into a lot of misconceptions about will and how will works in human beings. But nonetheless, that’s the idea behind this perseverance is that if you are really determined and you put in a big effort that you deserve something.

Oren: Whereas, like, a failed version of that would be the author just narrates that the protagonist, like, aimed better than they ever had before. Like, you gotta give me some specifics here.

Bunny: I think that the scene in Brave is the one that you might be referencing where Meredith splits one of the arrows down the center. That’s very much the, like, she focuses, breathes, ignores her mother and then fires the arrow. I don’t know if that counts as a turning point.

Oren: That was pretty early in the movie, right?

Bunny: Yeah, no. That’s quite early in the movie. But it does feel earned that she got the shot, I suppose.

Oren: I mean, and that’s fine, right? If that was the ultimate climax I would say that’s probably not enough. But for an early turning point, especially a turning point where we turn from what the preview said the movie was gonna be about to what it was actually about, that’s … I think that could work fine.

Chris: I like the one in Mad Max: Fury Road. Max’s turning point is giving the gun to Furiosa and having her take the shot instead.

Bunny: Yeah. That one’s good.

Chris: Which, I dunno. It shows humility, right? He earns it by admitting that maybe he’s not the best person to take the shot and that’s why they succeed.

Bunny: I’ll tell you something else that’s not a turning point.

Oren: Oh yeah? 

Bunny: Having the high ground.

Chris: Don’t do it. Don’t do it, Anakin. I mean, what that is supposed to—again, if we talk about downward turning points, right? That’s supposed to show carelessness—right?—on Anakin’s part and a lack of perseverance in succumbing to temptation, which is actually a fairly typical thing that you’ll see in downward turning points. The explanation for it was just exceptionally silly.

Bunny: It’s shown by Obi-wan somersaulting over his head. Very deep.

Chris: [Laughs] But sometimes what you’ll see is there’ll be a turning point that’s not. When you look at it it isn’t really a turning point for the protagonist. It’s a turning point for the antagonist where they do something to earn their failure. And, I don’t know, I think usually it’s better for the protagonist to be in the driver’s seat, but these aren’t always bad. But most often you’ll see them; the protagonist has a turning point where they win and then the villain has a downward turning point where they die.

Oren: Yeah.

Bunny: [Laughs]

Chris: They die as a result of their crime, so the protagonist doesn’t have to finish them off.

Bunny: They usually fall off of something.

Oren: Thanks, gravity.

Bunny: Or a chameleon trips them and kills them.

Oren: Good job, chameleon.

Chris: Usually one of their victims comes back and then drags them away.

Oren: Alright. Well, I think we are just about out of time. We’ve reached the turning point where we win the podcast by having podcasted real good.

Chris: And if you think that we’ve earned some good karma with this episode, consider supporting us on Patreon. Go to patreon.com/mythcreants.

Oren: And before we go, I wanna thank a few of our existing patrons. First, there’s Ayman Jaber. He’s an urban fantasy writer and a connoisseur of Marvel. Then there’s Kathy Ferguson. She’s a professor of political theory in Star Trek. We’ll talk to you next week.

 [closing theme]

Chris: This has been the Mythcreant Podcast. Opening and closing theme, “The Princess who Saved Herself” by Jonathan Colton.