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My sister's given me two books of steampunk short stories and given that I know she loves TVT, I'm betting that they're not going to be exactly what you'd call "good".
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Jan 31, 2014 19:32
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Arcsquad12 posted:Well Steampunk was coined in the 80s as a riff on Cyberpunk, which dealt with similar themes, albeit in a futuristic setting. Steampunk as a genre was inspired by late 19th century, early 20th century novels such as stuff by H.G Wells, where fantastical machines far beyond what was possible at the time were a focus. See books like The Time Machine, or 20000 Leagues Under the Sea. This is it, really. For the -punk to be accurate, the story needs to focus on the people on the fringes of society, scraping by through whatever means possible. Otherwise it's just flavor-of-the-month SF/F with a quirky setting. Since the Victorian era is 'quirky' and nerds have a hard-on for fancy victorian and edwardian dress, tropers are drawn to it like moths to flame. Calling it steampunk just makes it sound cooler. This line sums up the troper view on what -punk fiction is: quote:Cattle Punk: (The Western/Space Western) A typical John Ford film setting, only with things like robots, super-weapons, and wacky gadgets tossed in. I mean, it's possible to write a -punk story in a setting like that. Say, for example, town life is transformed by the encroaching railroad-rancher industrial complex, and the story explores the effects of their disintegrating community due to exploitative economic practices. But to tropers, it's just a cooler-sounding term for space western (which is already cool enough, why do we need a new term for it). I am not a book posted:Since this discussion touches on cyberpunk, I encourage everyone to go out and read the Sprawl Trilogy and the short story collection Burning Chrome, both by William Gibson. They are the true cyberpunk poo poo, potent and uncut. Extra points if you purchase a copy from a used bookstore located down a dark alley that only accepts cash, as that is the second-most cyberpunk method of purchasing anything.(The first-most method is of course cracking into the publisher's network and stealing an electronic copy, but I don't want to get into Do this, but be sure to start with Burning Chrome because it's really the guide to understanding all the jargon that Gibson throws around in the first 75 pages of Neuromancer.
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Jan 31, 2014 21:07
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K. W. Jeter was the first writer to label a work "steampunk", and he's definitely all about the "imperialism and exploitation of the poor made worse by technology" theme. Most of the other stuff out there is steampop.
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Jan 31, 2014 21:14
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I'm pretty sure I've mentioned it before in this very thread, but for all its narrative faults, Dishonored is some of the most purestrain steampunk to come out in years. It's only really hampered by the fact that it isn't actually about anything, but it's as far removed from your top-hats-and-cogs Phil Foglio bullshit as modern steampunk gets.
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Jan 31, 2014 21:27
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Djeser posted:My sister's given me two books of steampunk short stories and given that I know she loves TVT, I'm betting that they're not going to be exactly what you'd call "good". Steampunk tends to have a pretty high poo poo-to-readable ratio because there are so many people who just think "slap a gear on it" and you've got it down. The abuse of -punk isn't really a troper thing; it's been a problem going back about a decade or so. Well, a problem as far as understanding the nature of genres. I'm not going to go around frothing at the mouth because a large number of nerds decide anything with anachronistic gadgetry is "-punk". The warping of steampunk away from the social aspects lead to that abuse.
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Jan 31, 2014 21:31
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Random Stranger posted:Steampunk tends to have a pretty high poo poo-to-readable ratio because there are so many people who just think "slap a gear on it" and you've got it down. Stories set in preexisting fiction settings often suffer from a lack of effort, because the writer expects the quirks of the setting to be enough to make a story on their own, instead of serving as a backdrop. Which reminds me... I guess a part of the problem is that fundamentally different stories and settings are often bundled together under the same name due to superficial similarities, so "alternate past with steam engines everywhere" gets labeled "steampunk" for no good reason.
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Jan 31, 2014 21:47
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-punk is dead, guys. Literally dead. I think that focusing on the etymology of the suffix is a pedantic mistake - if I'm trying to sell you a retrofuturistic book that is really X setting but with Y twist, it's faster to say BiblePunk, SteamPunk, StonePunk, etc. If I've got 40 words to convince you to give me money, why waste them being exacting in the definition of the setting when I could put those words to describing theme or characters? After you've picked it up, then I'll tell you why it's really Victorian high fantasy, Mecha Camelot, or the 1850 Indian Revolution with British aliens. The fact that tropers use NounPunk to create lovely and shallow settings is more about a lack of imagination and lack of exposure to other media, rather than a reason to demand all -punk stories star only the grittiest of the downtrodden. Right or wrong, it's a genre label now.
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Jan 31, 2014 22:01
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Djeser posted:My sister's given me two books of steampunk short stories and given that I know she loves TVT, I'm betting that they're not going to be exactly what you'd call "good". Don't forget to hand in your bookreport.  I have never read anything steampunk. So to me steampunk is based on images I've seen which are usually Victorian age stuff with high tech machinery powered by steam and loads of gears. From what I read above this isn't far off. So can anyone explain me what stonepunk is? Is this the Flintstones with animals in everything?
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Jan 31, 2014 22:14
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Darth TNT posted:So can anyone explain me what stonepunk is? Is this the Flintstones with animals in everything? ETA: VVV That's apparently why they call it "gaslamp fantasy" rather than steampunk; they have steam, sure, and other technologies, but not that much punk, so they couldn't in good conscience call it steampunk. VVV darthbob88 fucked around with this message at 22:35 on Jan 31, 2014 |
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Jan 31, 2014 22:27
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DStecks posted:top-hats-and-cogs Phil Foglio bullshit 
Sham bam bamina! fucked around with this message at 22:31 on Jan 31, 2014 |
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Jan 31, 2014 22:29
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Darth TNT posted:Don't forget to hand in your bookreport. Considering the modern definition of punk fiction, yes, the Flintstones is stonepunk, it's anachronistic technology (like cars) in the stone age. In the same vein, The Jetsons is Atompunk. Yogi Bear is WPApunk.
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Jan 31, 2014 23:04
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What does all of this make Daft Punk, then? 
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Jan 31, 2014 23:10
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Regalingualius posted:What does all of this make Daft Punk, then? Trying to shoehorn dumb poo poo where it doesn't belong does sound like a mighty familiar concept. I was going to say Fallout: Equestria but my brain and conscience refuse to acknowledge even the slightest association between that and Daft Punk. Gimnbo fucked around with this message at 23:16 on Jan 31, 2014 |
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Jan 31, 2014 23:13
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Gotta love those real life examples.Attractiveness Isolation posted:This is when a character is seen as so attractive that she is never asked out, because anyone with half a brain would realize that a girl like her would reject a guy like him out of hand. It's obvious she's out of his league, so why bother to ask? Real Life posted:Pretty and beautiful women often suffer from "somebody's girl syndrome" (SGS) in which they are perpetually single while cute and average looking girls have boyfriends or are hanging around guys. That's because many guys think the hot chicks already have gorgeous boyfriends and are out of their league and won't approach them. Therefore, the hot chick contracts SGS as a result. Guys also stay away from these particular women when they follow what self-help guru Robert Ringer calls the "Boyfriend Theory" which states that a man is better off physically by assuming that she has this big, buff and mean boyfriend, POSSLQ, fiance or husband until he can assemble enough background information about the very attractive woman without stalking her. quote:This actually affects the entire spectrum. While most people fantasize about the The Beautiful Elite, they're usually most attracted to people in their own league, and usually meet attention from these people with suspicion. The exception is, of course, the Ugly Guy, Hot Wife scenario with either gender. quote:Mila Kunis has had this lately. I want to know how they found out that Mila Kunis has this.
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Feb 1, 2014 01:43
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Kaiser Mazoku posted:Gotta love those real life examples. Over coffee, you know. Or actually maybe that was in their "real person fanfic" about how they met her and fell in love because he was the only guy who approached her like a normal person and then blablablabla. But I mean you can just google her and find out that she's been dating Ashton Kutcher since 2012 and before that was dating Macauley Culkin so I don't think she's suffering in that department, really. Fact checking, people!
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Feb 1, 2014 02:49
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quote:Attractiveness Isolation posted: Hm, that sounds familiar. Where have I heard that before? quote:'That? Oh, it's the jerk sydrome.' Angua remembered who she was talking to, and added, 'Er ... dwarfs probably don't have that. It means ... sometimes a woman is so beautiful that any man with half a brain isn't going to think of asking her out, okay? Because it's obvious that she's far too grand for the likes of him. Are you with me?' Remember, folks, there's no such thing as originality, just giving things new names.
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Feb 1, 2014 10:10
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TheIncredulousHulk posted:That's why you get tropers focusing purely on tangible details of a story instead of what those details are being used to say, and if they want to criticize a story, they can only do it by nitpicking the "logic." That's probably why there's so much loving emphasis on worldbuilding over storytelling there. The worst part? If you actually loop it back in, it shows how fundamentally anti-story it is. I suppose there's a better example, but I used to really like internet reviewers a few years ago, and one, Linkara (some of you probably know him), would film little stories around his reviews. Nothing groundbreaking, but considering it has no pedophilia, misogyny, or rape it's pretty much harmless (at least, back when I was watching). Anyway, during one Halloween review he tried to do a tribute to the Thing and had himself and his 'characters' locked in his house. All he had to do was say he couldn't get out of the house. That's all that most would need. Instead, he spends like a minute in one episode listing all the things he and his fellows tried to get out, like trying the windows, taking the hinges off the door, etc, ie covering every single angle people could nitpick. And it just sounded TERRIBLE. It was among the most unnatural dialogue I've ever heard, even for an amateur, and NONE of it was needed. But why was it done? Because tropers love people like Linkara, and that means they've likely filled his comments again and again with endless, idiotic, sperging CRAP, and he's learned the wrong lesson and decided to placate them instead of tuning them out. When tropers get what they want, they destroy the very essence of a story. And they're blind to it. Film Crit Hulk did a column on the subject too, I think based around the film Looper as a jumping off point, and he basically pointed out that any kind of analysis that negates the story because the characters act 'smart' in said analysis (In Looper, why do the future criminals not just dump their targets into an ocean? was the example IIRC) doesn't make the story better or analyzed, it just makes it gone while people masturbate over how smart they are, No wonder tropers have so much trouble with sexual stuff: they can never stop masturbating.
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Feb 1, 2014 11:21
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Cornwind Evil posted:Film Crit Hulk did a column on the subject too, I think based around the film Looper as a jumping off point, and he basically pointed out that any kind of analysis that negates the story because the characters act 'smart' in said analysis (In Looper, why do the future criminals not just dump their targets into an ocean? was the example IIRC) doesn't make the story better or analyzed, it just makes it gone while people masturbate over how smart they are Reminds me of "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality", where the troper author says that what Voldemort really should have done was put one of his horcruxes on a space shuttle and make another out of a random rock in a forest or something. Which ignores not only the obvious in-universe reasons (wizards don't know poo poo about muggle technology, and the status-obsessed wizard hitler is too proud to put a piece of his soul in something ordinary) but also the even more obvious reasons why doing those things would make the story completely unable to progress. Tellingly, his "improved" version of the story is in fact unable to progress; as I understand it, after 100 chapters Harry is still a first-year, and Voldemort just doesn't bother plotting anything because he's already invincible and is now too busy wanking about how religious people are stupid.
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Feb 1, 2014 11:54
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Some logic is necessary to maintain suspension of disbelief. If your character is supposed to be a top-secret spy secret agent assassin, they shouldn't be outsmarted by a combination lock. But all too often the criticism that I see basically requires the characters to have read the book/watched the movie. Which brings us back to the point of tropers not seeing fiction as something that was created wholesale of the authors imagination (with some cultural contextual input), but as something that is more or less tangible. And that means the characters in a book could have read the book because the book does exist and shows the antagonists plan in detail. Ironically, writing such a story leads to a complete lack of dramatic tension, or, in troper speak, a curb stomp.
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Feb 1, 2014 13:24
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Lottery of Babylon posted:Reminds me of "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality", where the troper author says that what Voldemort really should have done was put one of his horcruxes on a space shuttle and make another out of a random rock in a forest or something. Which ignores not only the obvious in-universe reasons (wizards don't know poo poo about muggle technology, and the status-obsessed wizard hitler is too proud to put a piece of his soul in something ordinary) but also the even more obvious reasons why doing those things would make the story completely unable to progress. He completely missed the point of why Voldemort used special objects and seven horcruxes. Seven is a magic number, so it appeals to him. It's like some nerd doing something 42 times because it appeals to him. And as for using special objects, Voldemort is an arrogant wizard-supremacist who wanted to use magical artifacts because they had status. Plus would YOU cram a chunk of your soul into a rock and just leave it in some forest? I for one want the mangled remnants of my soul to travel in style. As for Methods of Rationality...I consider myself an atheist and a supporter of scientific progress, but that rear end in a top hat is just insufferable. His crappy little fanfic won't make anyone change their mind. For someone religious, it'll just make them think that atheists are arrogant assholes who love to masturbate their own egos.
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Feb 1, 2014 13:44
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This all reminds me of something Yahtzee said during the LP of his Chzo Mythos games. The first game deals with a group of people trapped in a house over the course of a week, with lots of creepy things going on. What's the one thing people focus on? The fact that we don't see anyone eat over the course of the week. Normal people would assume that people would be grabbing food when necessary, but no, we don't see it, ergo, it didn't happen. By the same token, the second game deals with a spaceship encountering a locker, floating in space. Everyone notes that this shouldn't be possible, considering how staggeringly huge space is. The obvious implication is that some supernatural force is at work here. But even still, people were lining up to tell him how that shouldn't be possible. The story explicitly states in the first ten minutes that scary ghostie poo poo be goin' down here, yo, and they still throw a fit over it. Incidentally, Yahtzee threw in a couple of scenes/interactable objects that let you know the crew could in fact acquire food and eat when they felt like it. People still complained. For a bunch of people who claim to celebrate everything about storytelling, they sure do hate premises, internal logic and anything unrealistic.
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Feb 1, 2014 14:40
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So basically, any number of siblings can be inferred to be loving, but it's impossible to infer that people are eating or that creepy poo poo may include improbable things happening? Yeah, sounds like tropers all right.
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Feb 1, 2014 15:11
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Quentin Tarentino's stock answer for when a fan asks him why a character in one of his movies does X instead of Y is that X makes for a better story. Tropers hate that answer.
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Feb 1, 2014 15:59
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It all comes back to Tropers having no real knowledge of how to absorb and analyse media. This is why we get Tropers falling over themselves to point out piddling little non-circumstances like that, while being unable to consider what it all meant or wouldn't have meant for the narrative. It's also why all they know in regards to things like genre is "this genre is steampunk because cogs". Going for the most tedious and dull take of "well, no one got struck by a bullet during the desperate chase scene until the very end which, i think you will find, is pretty unlikely" is the only thing you can do when you don't actually know poo poo about even basic media analysis.
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Feb 1, 2014 16:03
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Froghammer posted:Quentin Tarentino's stock answer for when a fan asks him why a character in one of his movies does X instead of Y is that X makes for a better story. Tropers hate that answer. I am reminded of that creepy guy Chagen (the one who whinged endlessly about how homosexuality is against his religion and gave some folks a hard time about it, but wouldn't shut up about his fetish for masturbating in soiled nappies) constantly whinging about how none of his stories (ie. fanfics) have themes, and how he hates the idea of publishing anything he writes because his loathing of the whole idea of Death of the Author has manifested as crippling fear of readers intepreting what he writes (again, fanfics) contrary to his own intentions.
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Feb 1, 2014 16:27
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Slime posted:As for Methods of Rationality...I consider myself an atheist and a supporter of scientific progress, but that rear end in a top hat is just insufferable. His crappy little fanfic won't make anyone change their mind. For someone religious, it'll just make them think that atheists are arrogant assholes who love to masturbate their own egos. Oh, I think there are already plenty of much more well known atheists who give off that impression to the religious than the writer of some poo poo fic about scientific wizards.
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Feb 1, 2014 17:11
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B-but it's so hard being white! Waaaaaagh!
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quote:I'd like a fic of an Equestria a hundred years after the disappearances of the pony princesses. Rampant industrialization has taken hold, though no pony really knows why or likes it. Most ponies don't get their cutie marks. Those that do at special, approved academies in Canterlot, become the Marked, who are privileged over Blanks. Better to be Blank than Branded; those whose cutie marks had to be removed due to disloyalty. King Blueblood III reigns over the Kingdom, though it's a good question as to who really runs things, he or the corporations determined to place employees into corporate serfdom. Most unmarked pegasi can't fly anymore, most unmarked unicorns can't do magic; in fact there are school books that question if its even possible, or even if it was EVER possible. Earth ponies live far away from nature, wondering what that empty hole is inside them. Equestria hurts, and it doesn't even know the source of its pain.
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Feb 1, 2014 18:09
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Metal Loaf posted:I am reminded of that creepy guy Chagen (the one who whinged endlessly about how homosexuality is against his religion and gave some folks a hard time about it, but wouldn't shut up about his fetish for masturbating in soiled nappies) constantly whinging about how none of his stories (ie. fanfics) have themes, and how he hates the idea of publishing anything he writes because his loathing of the whole idea of Death of the Author has manifested as crippling fear of readers intepreting what he writes (again, fanfics) contrary to his own intentions. That might be one of the most psychotic paragraphs I've ever read. 
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Feb 1, 2014 18:12
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Hey, remember when 'alternate universe' meant 'same characters and setting, but with a different course of events' rather than 'badly written porn plus ponies/vampires/demon hunting brothers with dog dicks and occasionally steampunk'?
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Feb 1, 2014 18:13
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quote:I'm in the process of writing it as of now. I'm making a Pilot of sorts for thisFan Fic. It's basically a SelfInsert Fic with a healthy dose of Quantum Leap when it comes to going to different times/places to Set Right What Once Went Wrong and the cast is (definitely not set in stone) an Expy of myself, Alex Mercer Prototype, Ben Tennyson with Ultimatrix Ben 10, and Kazuma Kaze no Stigma.
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Feb 1, 2014 18:14
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Metal Loaf posted:I am reminded of that creepy guy Chagen (the one who whinged endlessly about how homosexuality is against his religion and gave some folks a hard time about it, but wouldn't shut up about his fetish for masturbating in soiled nappies) constantly whinging about how none of his stories (ie. fanfics) have themes, and how he hates the idea of publishing anything he writes because his loathing of the whole idea of Death of the Author has manifested as crippling fear of readers intepreting what he writes (again, fanfics) contrary to his own intentions. I've got no patience with Death of the Author as it pertains to Internet arguments but this is taking it a little far.
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Feb 1, 2014 18:22
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quote:his loathing of the whole idea of Death of the Author has manifested as crippling fear of readers intepreting what he writes (again, fanfics) contrary to his own intentions If you die as an author, you die in real life? 
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Feb 1, 2014 18:26
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Oxxidation posted:I've got no patience with Death of the Author as it pertains to Internet arguments but this is taking it a little far. And not nearly literal enough.
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Feb 1, 2014 18:30
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vaguely posted:If you die as an author, you die in real life? Also, you won't finish your work and people will be kind of inconvenienced by that. Dick.
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Feb 1, 2014 18:30
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What is with Tropers and their need to reference?! You would think they are getting paid by the reference to post such unreadable poo poo. Even when they are trying to prove to no one that they are king of the nerds, this one-up-ship is just tiring think about cause you know what who ever this hack is has a post the size of the Washington Monument describing the minutiae of how all these references work in their  world
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Feb 1, 2014 18:56
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quote:Mighty Whitey and Mellow Yellow  : BEEP BOOP I HAVE NOTICED THERE ARE A LOT OF WORKS WITH WHITE MALES GOING FOR ASIAN FEMALES, I MUST CATALOG IT. THERE IS NO WAY ANYONE WOULD OBJECT TO MY REFERRING TO ASIANS AS A WHOLE AS YELLOW.Seriously how loving sheltered do you have to be to not realize the racist connotations of the trope name. I'm betting whoever thought that was a good idea probably didn't even realize the implications of what he typed. And there's a trope for Asian Airhead, because somehow that's completely different than just a normal dumb beauty because of  . Seriously, for people who fetishize Japan and to a lesser extent Asia, they are really racist about it.
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Feb 1, 2014 19:23
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crowfeathers posted:Then two sisters, who love each other far more literally than any could understand or approve,
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Feb 1, 2014 19:23
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Parsley posted:It all comes back to Tropers having no real knowledge of how to absorb and analyse media. Tropers have a real big issue of their 'advantage' (consuming more pop than the norm) working against them (and embracing it). The average person sees a certain amount of media and hence if they have to analyze it, they only have what they've experienced. Tropers consume media endlessly, see the same things over and over as a result, and end up overstimulated. The constant repeaters start sticking out like a sore thumb to them because they see it over and over because they consume so drat much of it, even IF they don't stick to a narrow pool of interests, and so it becomes a problem to them. Hence they approach fiction as trying to 'fix' the problem: this not only creates a whole bunch of NEW problems, but it's making a problem out of something that's not one to begin with. Now yes, new things can be interesting (I remember thinking Knights of the Old Republic 2 was a GREAT story because it was so different from the average Star Wars story, but that was several years ago, who knows if I'd think the same today), but cramming them into a story because there has to be something new is like reinventing the sled. It's dosble, but far less impressive and useful. Really, 95 percent of "Why did X do Y? They're SO STUPID.' can be boiled down to "Because X is not an omniscient, and more importantly SAFE, observer of events, rather than a participant." It would be an interesting experiment if the average Troper was given everything they needed to survive a zombie apocalypse in some sort of VR simulation (and we'll include a fit body as part of it) and then dropped into one without knowledge it was all fake to see how they'd handle it with all their 'genre savviness'.
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Feb 1, 2014 20:07
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Sham bam bamina! posted:Of fuckin' course. One of them is even a prostitute!
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Feb 1, 2014 20:13
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crowfeathers posted:I'd like a fic of an Equestria a hundred years after the disappearances of the pony princesses. Rampant industrialization has taken hold, though no pony really knows why or likes it. Most ponies don't get their cutie marks. Those that do at special, approved academies in Canterlot, become the Marked, who are privileged over Blanks. Better to be Blank than Branded; those whose cutie marks had to be removed due to disloyalty. King Blueblood III reigns over the Kingdom, though it's a good question as to who really runs things, he or the corporations determined to place employees into corporate serfdom. Most unmarked pegasi can't fly anymore, most unmarked unicorns can't do magic; in fact there are school books that question if its even possible, or even if it was EVER possible. Earth ponies live far away from nature, wondering what that empty hole is inside them. Equestria hurts, and it doesn't even know the source of its pain. Is he seriously outlining a story but asking someone else to write it for him? 
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Feb 1, 2014 20:36
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