Misha Burnett is wising up the rubes.
@MishaBurnett
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Because I do not hope to turn again. Because I do not hope. Because I do not hope to turn.
Joined February 2012
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I probably ought to have a pinned tweet, just so people know what it is that I do.
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Woman: "I want to be just friends"
Man: "Okay, I'll treat you like just a friend."
Woman: "Not like that! I meant the kind of just friends where you do whatever I want!"
So in other words … As usual he was never her friend. He was just another guy who believes all relationships with women are transactional with sex being the only valuable currency women have.
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@kjgillenwater
Nowhere does it say that she walked home alone. They were at gathering of friends. She had the option of asking anyone else. She had the option of calling a cab.
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@whatkolya
Bullying is a learned behavior. Adults use bullies to keep the other students docile. Teachers who claim to oppose bullies are lying--that is their primary strategy for keeping order in the classroom.
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Modern Fictional Detective: "I must catch this killer in order to overcome my fear of failure and my deep-seated trauma."
1970s Fictional Detective: "I must catch this killer because he's f
#cking
killing people."
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@AndrewIlyrian
Like what? If a friend asks me to do a favor and I'm tired and don't feel like doing it, I'll say so. And I would expect a friend to respect that.
"Do what I want or you can't be my friend anymore" isn't something I'll put up with from anyone.
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@HashemGhaili
Wait, it's Brave New World season now? I still have my Nineteen Eighty Four decorations up.
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@Makeshift_quill
Because he was tired and didn't want to go out of his way to her place then go back to his place. I think that's a perfectly reasonable response.
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My Cyberpunk thread:
I consider four works to be foundational texts of the Cyberpunk movement:
William Gibson, Neuromancer
Walter John Williams, Hard Wired
Michael Swanwick, Vacuum Flowers
Bruce Sterling, Schizmatrix
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@WAquilante
@DrLeanaWen
So... the vaccine I took doesn't work unless everyone around is vaccinated, too? How does my vaccine know if other people are vaccinated? Does it suddenly stop working if an unvaccinated person enters the room? How does this work, exactly?
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Because for them gobbledygook is intelligence. They associate intelligence with education, and education with memorizing a specialized vocabulary. "If you don't know what the words I use mean, then I must be smarter than you."
Using the words correctly is irrelevant.
I don't understand why when Hollywood movies try to portray geniuses, they make them say gobbledygook that any smart person can tell is very fake.
Their budgets are in the hundreds of millions, surely they can just hire a specialist consultant to not sound dumb?
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@Karenshea
If she was his friend she would have accepted that he was tired and didn't feel like walking all over campus.
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@AndrewIlyrian
No, he's setting limits on what she can expect from him as a friend rather than a potential romantic partner. She's the one who wanted to limit the relationship, it's not unreasonable for him to have his own limits. As I say, if she was his friend, she'd respect that.
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The central conceit of the "Damsel in Distress" theme in fiction isn't that women are weaker than men, or that a woman is the prize for the man.
The point of those stories is that the woman is worth killing a dragon for.
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@cirsova
I don't think that anything in the subsequent franchise ever quite recaptured the wonder of the original movie. The Original Trilogy was Science Fiction, but the first film, taken by itself, was High Adventure. People have been chasing that first high for half a century.
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Cyberpunk today is as outdated as the 1970s SF that the Cyberpunk authors were rebelling against. It's not extrapolating from 2020s technology, it is still wedded to the 2020 that was imagined by authors writing in the 1980s.
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@RapidashReena
So then if the first guy you asked said he was tired and didn't feel like walking that far you'd just ask someone else.
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@TheBlackHorse65
Religion is not irrelevant to the outcome of the game in Civ 5. It can be used to buy resources and influence city states. Maneuvering your religion into ascendency is an important part of winning a diplomatic victory.
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"This is Hard SF! Everything in this story is based on Real Science!"
"How did they get to this other planet?"
"In a flying submarine with a magic box that makes them teleport."
"Ahhh."
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@MSOlney1
And a lady would have withdrawn the request and apologized when the gentleman said he was tired and didn't care to add an extra leg to his walk home.
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The decline of D&D can be traced to a change in the perception of what a player character is supposed to be. I've never thought of a PC as "me", and I think that's an inherently unhealthy attitude. My characters are counters on a game board and losing them is part of the game.
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Engineers need to learn how to get right answers more than they need to learn anything else.
@Nexuist
thinking right answers matter is so autistic
engineers need humanities classes more than ever. the world is messy. learning how to communicate and persuade and navigate the mess is what separates good engineers from cogs in the machine
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"Pay me or one of my friends a grand or we'll have you blackballed from the industry" is not a winning argument. If anything, it makes me even more determined to avoid using artwork of any kind on a book cover and just go with text only.
Authors using AI art on your covers, you're cutting off your own leg.
I'm not even talking about the accusations of "thief" that you're going to get. Let's set that aside.
I'm talking about the price you're paying in reputation and marketability to save maybe $1000.
(1/10)
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@Karenshea
Or she could have asked another friend, or taken a cab, both of which he suggested.
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@lporiginalg
If I'm not interested in dating a man who is physically healthy, what makes you think I'd want to date a man who has mutilated genitals?
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@MalesOfReddit
The victim blaming in the trans community is intense. Any bad outcome has to be the fault of the patient.
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Nu D&D Character Problems: "My half-dragon twin sister has been possessed by a demon (who is my lover's patron)!"
OSR Character Problems: "I have two hit points, it's five days to town, and I can carry either my wounded comrade or food, but not both."
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When did RPGs stop being about having fun and get so damned serious?
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I think the problematic term "Dungeon Master" should be replaced with the more sensitive and accurate "Dungeon Martyr".
DM: (with a long suffering sigh) Why do you want to know if the trebuchet will fit through the door of the inn?
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Serious question.
What is the difference between Chosen One and Easy Mode?
How can one write a story in which the main character is destined to fulfil a certain role while making the struggles of that character real?
Can a Chosen One have a real chance of failing?
@DieinPlace
It's not just a "trope."
It's one of the most meaningful symbolic representation of the evolution of a boy into a man.
It is the Monomyth, found in every human culture . Instantly recognisable. Instantly meaningful.
Just because it doesn't appeal to postmodern sensibilities...
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One (of many) things that puts the lie to the "SF/F fans were a persecuted minority until SJWs stepped in and occupied fandom" myth is how much pop music in the 1970s and 1980s had SF/F themes.
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About ten years ago an SF author observed publicly that the Hugo Awards had gone from being a fan award to being controlled by the editorial boards of a few traditional publishers.
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The TTRPG gatekeeping that needs to be brought down isn't people being kept out of the hobby, it's players being made into consumers and GMs presenting themselves as entertainers and artists.
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I keep seeing people saying that men don't read in various threads about books, as if it's some self-evident fact. My own experience runs completely contrary to this--the overwhelming majority of men I have known are voracious readers.
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The self-styled elite have always hated working men's entertainment not for any negative qualities it has, but because it was in the reach of the working man, who should be shining boots and shoveling coal for their betters instead of wasting time carousing.
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@DatingSims
@TheQuQu
What's sad is that we've gotten to a place where a young man thinks that abstaining from sex before marriage is shameful.
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It must be really sad to have a product that consists of videos of people sitting around talking and still manage to find a core audience for whom that is too intense.
#CriticalRoleSpoilers
If you need to take some time to process, that is ok. Just know there is trust and agreement at our table for this game and the challenges it offers. The darkest moments often lead to the brightest epiphanies. Love you all. <3
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I think the main problem with fantasy authors including gods and religion in their stories is that they start by tackling the question without understanding that there are two questions, and they require distinct answers.
Many authors don’t know how to write them properly.
There is no integration of religious ideas into society.
The gods are just humans with superpowers.
Instead of doing the research, they just write what they know.
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I never had a teacher who saw me as anything other than a problem they had to endure to get a paycheck.
Educators love their students and know better than anyone what they need to learn and to thrive.
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One of my themes is that blue collar workers are more able to handle the Uncanny than academics.
Lovecraftian Character: "O, the sights I saw when the portal opened drove me mad!"
Burnettian Character: "It was like that time I worked New Years Eve, but with less screaming."
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Woke Reboots are Soviet Show Trials. It's not about making art or even making money. The old heroes are paraded in front of the masses and forced to mouth Revolutionary slogans. It's a show of power.
"This is what we can do to those you once admired..."
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I really don't understand why an author would write a novel with the intent of making it the first of a multi-volume series. It seems like putting yourself into a straightjacket before you even get started.
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I keep hearing that RPGs need safety rules. Can anyone tell me why? What is the danger that people need to be protected from? I've been playing for decades and I have never been aware of any particular risk in playing RPGs.
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Had a job interview this morning for a position that I think I'd be good for, in a building that I like. I think the interview went well. Prayers would be appreciated.
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Imagine if these people ever found out about That Hideous Strength.
Do you consider The Lord of The Rings an extremist book?
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Them: "Thou must not mix genres!"
Me: Sits down to write a scene in which a police detective punches out a wizard in an alchemical fuel refinery built and operated by aquatic aliens from a parallel dimension.
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I am less bothered by Mary Sue characters than I am by stories set in Marysutopia.
A lot of classic SF suffers from that. Authors created societies in which their own personal preferences became the social norms.
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Reading Don Quixote for the first time and I realized with a bit of a start that it's a subversive deconstruction of the popular "Chivalry Pulp" of its time (which I have never heard of, and I suspect mostly doesn't survive to this day.)
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I suspect that the modern insistence on Character Arcs is a smokescreen, a rationale for the destruction of Heroic characters.
The goal isn't making characters more interesting, but providing an excuse to retcom previously existing characters to make them less admirable.
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@wil_da_beast630
Yeah, they didn't mean it when they said, "forsaking all others" and "in sickness and in health", that's just window dressing.
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@selvarin
I didn't notice that until you pointed it out. Where's Randell Patrick McMurphy when we need him?
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There is a bit in Lewis' The Screwtape Letters in which he describes a child's sense of ownership of a toy not in terms of affection, but as "the bear that I can pull to pieces if I want."
I am convinced that this attitude describes a lot of what happens in particular hobbies.
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150,000 words of an "Epic Fantasy Novel" will get you a partial story, to be continued in another brick sized book.
On the other hand, Ray Bradbury used those same 150,000 words to write The October Country and The Illustrated Man, for a total of 37 complete stories.
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@wokal_distance
"Women wear dress and men wear slacks" is a social convention and can be changed.
"Women have babies and men don't" is biology and cannot be changed.
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So it seems as if the narrative regarding TTRPGs has shifted from "The cool kids beat me up for playing D&D" to "The cool kids wouldn't let me play D&D with them."
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In three separate interviews recently I have had the recruiter ask if I was interviewing with any other companies. What response do they expect for that question? "Oh, no, there's only you. I'm going to sit by the phone and hope you call for as long as it takes!"
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And another thing--saving the girl is NOT the same thing as getting the girl. A man who rescues a woman doesn't automatically gain sexual access to her--even implied. A hero rescues a princess not to bed her, but because princesses are worth rescuing.
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Tom Bombadil represents a bridge between the kind of Fantasy story that was common at the time LOTR was written and the kind of Fantasy that Tolkien was writing.
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I keep seeing this pattern...
"When you are more popular than me I will insist that you promote me, because that is consistent with your principles.
"When I am more popular than you, I will denigrate you as a talentless amateur, because that is consistent with my principles."
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There are a lot of good short stories that have been published as mediocre novels because the author explains things that don't need to be explained.
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Watching a series called "What Went Wrong" with my roommate. So many disasters caused by people simply assuming that if you have a system that works and you leave it alone it will continue to work forever. Order is not natural, it has to be imposed by constant vigilance.
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People mistake stories involving moral peril as morally ambiguous stories, but what drives a Noir or Crime Thriller is a strong sense of right and wrong.
You get a lot of "we need more stories about moral ambiguity" from people who already have trouble understanding basic characterization, motivation, the nature of good and evil as they are presented conventionally.
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The word "Fantasy" does not mean "stories set in olden times with swords and stuff".
We need to reclaim the Fantastic.
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TV Writer: "Here's an exciting scene in which the heroes crawl through the air ducts to blow up the boiler room!"
Me: "You've never actually been inside a manmade structure, have you?"
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My younger followers may not believe this, but there was a time when a person could simply buy a printer, plug it into a computer, and print with it.
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An author shouldn't feel the need to justify a character acting heroically.
"He's a man and people were in danger" is sufficient.
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This is the action star America needs.
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@Hoping4agirl
@DeAngelisCorey
The problem is when unions stop being voluntary associations and are required by law. When union membership is required in order to work the union has no reason to represent the interest of workers and becomes parasitic.
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It's not just the competence of male that is celebrated, it is also the worth of the woman. A rescued princess isn't helpless or weak, the best of them are very strong (Dejah Thoris, Leia Organa).
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When Weird Fiction split into Fantasy and Horror both genres suffered. Horror lost the aspect of wonder, without which fear becomes pedestrian. Fantasy, however lost much more and needs to recapture the anarchic and terrible aspect of magic.
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@DystopiaPro69
I used to work with a man who had a master's degree who refused to believe that the US had ever been to war with Japan. He thought WWII was only in Europe.
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Apologize and let him go back to sleep?
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@realalexlains
While the nation is divided on the question of how many people voted against Trump, we can agree that nobody voted for Biden. Aside from a few media flaks who are really stretching their phony smiles, nobody can point to any positive thing about Biden except that he isn't Trump.
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UPS felt obligated to tell me that a "situation in Ukraine" may effect the delivery date of a package.
I'm no cartographer, but how in blazes does a trip from North Carolina to St. Louis pass through Ukraine?
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If I start running D&D I'm going to use this as my world map.
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Many Fantasy authors bring an unexamined atheistic worldview into their imaginary cosmos. They assume that the universe is uncreated and undesigned and gods, if they exist, are simply more powerful versions of human beings.
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On the off chance that authors really are following me in order to get ideas for new projects, I respectfully submit the following as alternatives to Steampunk:
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Got an online job interview this afternoon for a position that I think I'd be really good for. Prayers would be appreciated.
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If you read actual Pulp stories instead of critiques of the Pulps you find women who partner with the men who rescue them. They act as a team to overcome the danger.
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The dominance of the Epic Fantasy Series model in SFF publishing may be the single most destructive influence on contemporary genre fiction.
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When Fantasy loses the sense of magic being unnatural and dangerous it becomes just reskinned Superhero fiction.
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Is Science Fiction possible to write in a world full of the kinds of things that used to be Science Fiction?
Absolutely, but it's going to take as drastic a retooling of tropes as led from Have Spacesuit Will Travel to New Rose Hotel.
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Author: "What I want to write is Sheepdogs In Space, but what sells is Vampire Romance, so I'll write that instead."
Vampire Fans: "Oh, another book? Maybe I'll check it out when I finish the ones I already own."
Space Sheepdog Fans: "Oh, if only someone would write for us!"
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And this is why the "Self-rescuing Princess" trope is so unsatisfying to both male and female readers. It's not about strong women, it's about undesirable women.
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I think I need to write "The SF Writer's Guide To Structure Decay".
I am seeing way too many SF stories that have buildings abandoned for centuries still functional. I don't care how well engineered it is, a door that hasn't been maintained for a hundred years is a wall.
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We need to promote indie reviewers. If you review indie fiction, or know somebody who does, leave a link below and I'll try to think of a way to promote the site.
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There are a number of popular authors who think that other authors are trying to write like them and failing.
Maybe some are.
Some of us, though, are writing what we want to read and trusting that there are others out there who want to read it, too.
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"In a totally unexpected shocking twist ending, the real murderer is revealed not to be the homeless black man who was found at the scene with a bloody knife in his hand, but some rich blond guy who quotes the bible."
--Every episode of every cop show over the last 10 years.
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The shark that Steampunk jumped is now eligible for social security. Give it up already. Pick another time and place for your retro-magical superscience. Let's see 1920s LA with blimps and flapper fembots. Depression Era mechs. Something.
Please!
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If someone running a game tells me, "I want you to tell me about all your traumatic events and phobias before I can let you play" I will definitely run, not walk, away from that table. I have absolutely zero reason to trust a stranger with that information.
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The male heroes don't take the woman as a prize, they enlist in her service. She needs a champion, not simply a change in captors.
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@GLokopixo
@lporiginalg
Frequently. I don't act on them because I believe that suicide is wrong.
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The bit about Velma losing her glasses in Scooby Doo wasn't just a running gag--it was a graphic representation of an important philosophical principle.
The "monsters" she investigated relied on being able to put on a false front to scare people.
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Revisiting Dick Francis's marvelous mystery novels. Among other things, he's a master of the "killer's first mention" which is one of the trickiest parts of writing a Mystery. It's like slipping a card into the deck in a magic trick, it has to be smooth.
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I want an End Of The World story that features main characters who are capable of thinking rationally, making plans, and possess at least some basic technical skills.
Am I being unreasonable?
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Enough is enough. This trend of writing protagonists who are jerks so that they can "have a personal growth story arc" has got to end. Seriously, if I don't like the main character at the beginning of the book I'm not going to read far enough to find out if they get better.
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What drove these authors was not the stylistic "film noir with circuits glued to it" that has become the modern definition of Cyberpunk, but an attempt to update the Science in Science Fiction. Most SF in the 1970s was still using WWII technology as its basis.
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