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3D Megadoodoo posted:I'm reading a book right RN now in IRL life. Tropes: Dutch people; alive-to-dead; pages made out of paper. Any cannibalism?
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Mar 19, 2024 22:42
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Gaius Marius posted:Any cannibalism? Not yet. But someone was having omelette with shrimp for dinner. Is that a trope?
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Mar 19, 2024 23:08
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cumpantry posted:you arent a very good writer based on post history so im siding with the readers here the collected works of something awful
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Mar 19, 2024 23:08
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Gaius Marius posted:This is the most depressing thing I've ever read. Why? This is the way that the vast, vast majority of people have interacted with literature since literacy became widespread. Most people approach it as entertainment and leave it at that. Hell there was a moral panic in the 19th century over the penny dreadful and how frivolous it was.
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Mar 20, 2024 14:11
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Cyrano4747 posted:Why? This is the way that the vast, vast majority of people have interacted with literature since literacy became widespread. What was described is not how most people approach entertainment, though.
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Mar 20, 2024 14:33
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Cyrano4747 posted:Why? This is the way that the vast, vast majority of people have interacted with literature since literacy became widespread. I was specifically talking about serials, and how it's highlighting issues elsewhere. I feel it's partly because the story can't be read to completion in one sitting, if the reader chooses to do so. They're limited by a release schedule, so each "episode" must contain and achieve certain things. The problem is how willing people are to stretch their ideas of whether the story is satisfying those things. And that'll differ for each reader. If someone is reading for "satisfaction" is it ok to leave a hanging thread to be picked up later? Even if the majority of that chapter achieves the satisfaction in other areas? Is it OK to leave some confusion about the world if you're writing a sci-fi or fantasy, and need/desire some mystery to remain? As I originally said, this was highlighted to me by serials/posting a chapter at a time online. Of course there'll be problems with churn, but the problems of "achievement" and "giving the reader something" in each distinct section are highlighted by this format when readers can't read straight through to the end. I feel even TV, which—recently at least—is much more established in this area has similar problems with whether to dump an entire series in one go or space it out over a few weeks. Sure, some of it is a business decision, but equally for an author publishing this way it's a business decision. Just one that's influencing how stories are told. To me it feels like the high and low points of what we knew to be novels, where a reader would be taken through something, and allowed to feel a downbeat, are being squashed out by a need to retain readers.
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Mar 20, 2024 15:35
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Mrenda posted:I was specifically talking about serials, and how it's highlighting issues elsewhere. I feel it's partly because the story can't be read to completion in one sitting, if the reader chooses to do so. They're limited by a release schedule, so each "episode" must contain and achieve certain things. The problem is how willing people are to stretch their ideas of whether the story is satisfying those things. And that'll differ for each reader. Oh got you, I missed somehow it was in reference to the serial thing you mentioned before. Is there any indication of how people handled serials back when they had their first big moment in 19th century papers? I'm thinking of Dickens etc.
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Mar 20, 2024 15:44
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Cyrano4747 posted:Oh got you, I missed somehow it was in reference to the serial thing you mentioned before. I don't know if the other comments were directly about my mention of serials... But on my point I imagine a lot of other things have contributed to changes in how serials are handled now. Not least release schedules. Reading through the serials thread it seems some release on a schedule of twice a week. I don't know how many words per episode they're doing, but that wouldn't be possible for me. Not when I write anywhere between about 5,000 words and 12,000 an episode, on average, with the extremes being between 3,000 and 17,000 words. I don't know how often the "original" serials were released. I suppose it could vary from literally getting something every day in a newspaper; so you get a novella in a week or two, all the way to releasing one chapter every two months in a lit mag. And each "time-gap" would be treated in a different manner in the story. If you're getting 1,500 words every day to end up as a novella in a couple of weeks you want something getting your heart and mind racing, buying the paper every day. If you're getting a lengthy chapter (Ulysses) in a lit mag every couple of months you might want something you can chew on. I think what also varies, and possibly has more influence, is the amount of competition. People can often find exactly what they want. It might sound paternalistic but what people want isn't often what's "best" for them. Even from a pure base instinct aspect and not some "eat your vegetables" sense. Having a "sad" moment in the story could upset a reader, and get them to stop reading, especially when it's not resolved for another week or two of releases, but it does mean when it is resolved the resolution is much more rewarding. That's an extremely simplistic take but I feel it's valid. And to me it seems like something some readers are shying away from (although far from all, I don't want to be unfair, I have some great readers.) My fear is this carries over into "wider" reading tastes. You already have readers saying they put down books when someone said something nasty. Or did something they didn't like. No matter how the novel deals with it. As I write more I'll see about editing my stuff into novel form, and I wonder what the reception will be then. When people can keep reading the entire story until they're satisfied, not because the next part hasn't been published.
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Mar 20, 2024 16:24
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Your episodes are too long, OP.
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Mar 20, 2024 16:28
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3D Megadoodoo posted:Your episodes are too long, OP. Don't worry. I've started drinking. They'll become shorter and more incomprehensible to 95% of people as the day goes on.
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Mar 20, 2024 17:18
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Mrenda posted:My fear is this carries over into "wider" reading tastes. You already have readers saying they put down books when someone said something nasty. Or did something they didn't like. No matter how the novel deals with it. As I write more I'll see about editing my stuff into novel form, and I wonder what the reception will be then. When people can keep reading the entire story until they're satisfied, not because the next part hasn't been published. I don't know if this is more prevalent today, but I suspect it's something that has always been there to some extent. Purely anecdotal, but my Grandmother does that and apparently has her entire life. She's also very much an incurious woman who tries to avoid anything she doesn't think is 'nice,' something that has very much been a problem in other aspects of her life. Something I think is important to keep in mind when looking at the state of literature (or anything else) and comparing it to how things used to be is that there is an incredible amount of survivorship bias. The books from the late 19th or early 20th centuries that are still read today are read for a reason - they're classics. But if you really go digging around there is a lot of just garbage written that people gobbled up. Here's one example that I'm aware of because my dad has an old copy: The Lone Star Ranger, one of the best selling novels in 1915. It's poo poo. Like, bad Hardy Boys novel level of crap. This wasn't a WW1 eara YA book, either, this was broad audience literature. It's just bottom tier, pulpy, poo poo adventure story pap and it sold like gang busters. Well enough, glancing at that wikipedia page, that it was made into a movie 4 times between the 20s and 40s. Meanwhile 1915 is the same year that Kafka published The Metamorphosis (yes I know, short story, not quite apples to apples, insert a better example here). Basically, we've always had huge volumes of garbage churned out to entertain people while they ride the subway to work, it's just that we're more aware of the stuff coming out today than we are the books that fell into obscurity a century ago.
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Mar 20, 2024 17:23
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Mrenda posted:Don't worry. I've started drinking. They'll become shorter and more incomprehensible to 95% of people as the day goes on. Glad to hear you're working on yourself.
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Mar 20, 2024 18:11
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3D Megadoodoo posted:Glad to hear you're working on yourself. namaste
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Mar 20, 2024 18:26
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Today's thought: It's considered inappropriate to engage in psychoanalysis of a book's author based on their work, and as a result, audiences respond with hostility and indignation when they encounter a work that they can't interpret without engaging in psychoanalysis of its author.
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Mar 30, 2024 20:05
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what a novel idea, lets call it death of the psychoanalyst
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Mar 30, 2024 22:45
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Gotta separate the psycho from the analysis
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Mar 30, 2024 22:50
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Comfy Fleece Sweater posted:Gotta separate the psycho from the analysis 
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Mar 30, 2024 23:04
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do you have a specific example in mind
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Mar 31, 2024 06:30
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Rand Brittain posted:Today's thought: It's considered inappropriate to engage in psychoanalysis of a book's author based on their work, and as a result, audiences respond with hostility and indignation when they encounter a work that they can't interpret without engaging in psychoanalysis of its author. By "audiences" you mean "fuken nerds".
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Mar 31, 2024 08:07
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I am listening to the audiobook of Mythos by Stephen Fry and holy poo poo. I just put a hold on the other two books in the series - Heroes and Troy. 2 month wait for those. It's unbelievably good, so accessible. I've never enjoyed the Greek myths like I have with this book.
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Mar 31, 2024 21:14
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escape artist posted:I am listening to the audiobook of Mythos by Stephen Fry and holy poo poo. I just put a hold on the other two books in the series - Heroes and Troy. 2 month wait for those. It's unbelievably good, so accessible. I've never enjoyed the Greek myths like I have with this book.
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Apr 1, 2024 00:29
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Thrirding 
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Apr 1, 2024 01:18
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This looks neat af https://www.1984publishing.com/bookstore/a-masterpiece-in-disarray-david-lynchs-dune-an-oral-history Haven't really ever read those "Oral history of" books (unless Blood Sweat and Chrome counts), but they seem like they're right up my alley, gonna make room for this one
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Apr 1, 2024 20:08
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Here is Tune and Fair Weather's preorder for two Dark Souls lore books/essay collections. I really like the lore of these games and want the nerdiest bookshelf possible, so I just treated myself.
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Apr 7, 2024 17:09
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Those look wonderful  kinda wish I liked DS more but I’m not really into it
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Apr 7, 2024 19:10
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Lore is interesting although having Lokey's name on it makes me want it a lot less, because that dude is insufferable.
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Apr 7, 2024 19:49
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You won’t die on that hill alone, I promise
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Apr 7, 2024 20:51
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Rand Brittain posted:Lore is interesting although having Lokey's name on it makes me want it a lot less, because that dude is insufferable. I don't know anything about him other than that he's a hardcore FromSoft nerd - how is he insufferable?
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Apr 7, 2024 23:38
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StrixNebulosa posted:I don't know anything about him other than that he's a hardcore FromSoft nerd - how is he insufferable? If you spend enough time investigating FromSoft lore, you wind up building a huge nest of assumptions: some of them big, some of them small, some of them well-supported by evidence and context, and some of them mostly going by "vibes". Eventually you're about ten assumptions deep, and any new theories you propose will be dependent on assumptions you made eight steps ago, like "the Erdtree is an illusion" or "Seath is Priscilla's biological father" and if people don't agree with those assumptions then everything you're saying now is based on air. Lokey is mostly annoying because he doesn't really accept that he's doing that, and so he'll constantly link to his own articles on topics like "drift" in a way that makes it sound like things that are vague concepts off-handedly mentioned in the actual games are really well-understood topics. Also he is the kind of guy who is pointlessly picky about localizations and says things like: Lokey posted:Majula, original name Madula, (マデューラ) which even I can tell is basically the same loving thing.
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Apr 7, 2024 23:50
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I'll keep those biases in mind when I read his book! Thanks.
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Apr 8, 2024 00:48
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Anyone referring to the Dark Souls lore as lore isn't worth reading. Although I suppose a book is a hell of a lot shorter than listening to some nasal Anglo constantly on the verge of tears.
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Apr 8, 2024 02:24
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Gaius Marius posted:Anyone referring to the Dark Souls lore as lore isn't worth reading. Although I suppose a book is a hell of a lot shorter than listening to some nasal Anglo constantly on the verge of tears. What should it be called then?
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Apr 8, 2024 02:57
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Nothing, you should be experiencing it and drawing your own conclusions not watching lore lords jabber.
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Apr 8, 2024 03:00
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Gaius Marius posted:Nothing, you should be experiencing it and drawing your own conclusions not watching lore lords jabber. Nah, it's more fun to play it in conjunction with watching video essays/reading theories.
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Apr 8, 2024 03:14
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Okay, I'm pissed now. Out of lack of other options I bought a book on Amazon and sent it to my Kindle, only to find out that apparently upon exiting the airplane mode, the e-reader decided to delete all the books I had uploaded to it via Calibre. Googling this it turns out this is a widely known bug that's been around for years and the manufacturer did gently caress all to deal with it during all that time. I never ran into this poo poo before, just used Kindles because they were readily available and easy to operate; this is my third and definitely last. anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 08:57 on Apr 16, 2024 |
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Apr 15, 2024 23:39
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yea im on the lookout for a kobo myself
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Apr 15, 2024 23:44
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