The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.
Say hi to yer mother for me, [chat]
Atomika
Live fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered User regular
Live fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered User regular
Atomika on
+16
This discussion has been closed.
Posts
So sick of my frontal lobes
Criminal underuse of Matt Berry
Also of Michael Emerson
I was actually too mean to someone here when they recommended to me a russian-themed fantasy book by katherine arden, who is also not a very good writer, but whose works are broadly liked. Thinking about the conversation that ensued, I decided that I probably shouldn't be that mean about media in the future; it's genuinely hurtful to folks and there's no good reason for me to do that.
...surely this means I don't have to work??
I mean I definitely have to work but also, surely this means I don't have to work?????
This deserves a Pulitzer.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
Byowwwww
Eg: Goodkind of course. And Piers Anthony. But also like Orson Scott Card and Heinlein and such.
Dont you feel some sense that the world is ordered
That people can change
Basically when a story is being told, I need the events of the story to unfold in a way that both make sense and retrospectively seem inevitable.
The "making sense" part is just communicating to me, the reader, the range of things that are possible and how likely certain things are to happen. In scifi and fantasy this is really, really important because the world of the story doesn't work exactly like our world. So you've got to work hard to get me up to speed without writing a long dry lore dump.
But even in historical fiction, or non-fiction, I need to know who the players are, what they are capable of, and I need to have some understanding of what they might do in order to really follow the plot.
When this quality is lacking, I feel disconnected from the story, I feel like the author could just say anything they wanted, there are no stakes, and nothing is meaningful. Maybe that's a little reductive because a story has more avenues of expression than just its strict factual events. There is metaphorical meaning, there is style and mood. But at least to me, I really struggle to care about any of it if the plot is a mash of nonsense.
I just don't, I can't engage with the work.
Are you talking about Fallout? Cause if anything he's many characters that will be in every season.
oh my god the only thing I remember from the entire billion pages of goodkind I read was the sexy torture cave with the ladies in the jumpsuits
...it was kind of hot though yes? or maybe it only seemed hot cause I was 15 and what other sort of sexy material had I even read at the time
Yea him too!
In fact these companies need to shell out the money for these two to have their own show
Micheal Emerson
And
Matt Berry
Go off on adventures together
Billion dollar idea right there
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
which parts
well you see I'm a degen scum so
and you're off the hook.
if season 2 doesn't have more, and extended, mr handy antics, they are insane
So much tugging of braids
SF was steered by editor John Campbell who was a racist skinflint that thought any excess adjective was a penny he didn't want to pay and trained multiple generations of writers to equate literary style with being a limpwristed commie intellectual
So at least until 2000 every counterculture movement in US SF had gone really hard into style, sometimes well past the point of intelligibility, just to flip the bird at old Republicans and squares
So John Campbell would disapprove of writing "he said angrily."
I have to assume that Season 2 will find
They were just very noticeable
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
Latching onto this part because it conveniently damns Lost and the parts of Watchmen and Fallout that bothered me 😁
I think the way I would summarize this is that good writing needs to communicate the stakes, otherwise there is no emotional payoff to anything.
In some genres/subgenres, this requires more intentionality because it's not as clear what's at stake if you have two aliens talking about the state of florgiston on two different planets vs Joe and Sam hinting at a divorce in NYC in 2023.
I actually think I wouldn't use the word plot here because this quality is also important in a seemingly 'plotless' or unconventionally plotted novel.
Or the Guide to Making Fire Without Matches.
*Whu-TISH*
-There's a way
Actually the great thing is that you can have him show up in multiple voice roles, even multiple times a season.
You can have a room, full of Matt Berry's just talking to themselves.
Come Overwatch with meeeee