Actually, I have a question: Why do there seem to be no Viharts in fiction? Admittedly, she herself is pretty unique and awesome that way, but I haven’t come across even one character displaying that type of intelligent, feminine charisma in any vaguely consistent manner. In fact, there seem to be very few genuinely smart, curious and independent-thinking women in fiction, in contrast to very many who we are TOLD are smart and charismatic. (Some even have the balls to preach that, in reality, intelligence and charisma exclude each other. If I believed that, I’d “come out of the closet” as asexual.)
I hope this is due to my own inexperience. If not, I suspect this is mainly because, like in ancient cultures, over 90% of modern fiction consists of a handful of Great Themes worked and reworked into every story. And these “ready-made art powder, just add water” plot points only have roles reserved for traditional innocent types, self-righteous bitches who exist to force the author’s vision of just norms down everyone’s throats, their negative stereotypes, femme fatales, etc. However, I personally haven’t discovered Vihart-like characters even in creative and original works; not that I’ve read many of those. I hope our culture, at large, isn’t simply unconscious of (or insensible to :( ) this kind of beauty.
Tragically, I just realized that I’ve encountered no more than a handful of attractive women of any kind in fiction. And that includes none from HPMOR, which definitely isn’t recycled gunk. I have read a few chapters of Luminosity. Bella may be an improvement on the original, which I haven’t read and mean to keep it that way, but no, she’s not particularly charismatic yet. (I must confess, I don’t like her at all because she’s way too stuffy. That’s not a great failing or anything; most people are.)
Bella’s character (and most everything else about the story) improves over the course of the book. I also think the narrator of book two probably has more raw likeability than Bella.
There are lots of things I’ve never experienced, which I prefer not to experience. Are you suggesting that all such preferences are “irrational”? Or does reading Twilight belong to a more restricted class of experiences for which that’s true?
Huh. So, I infer from this that you consider halcyon’s position (“I haven’t read this and mean to keep it that way”) a judgment on something they are unfamiliar with, but consider my position (“I haven’t experienced this and prefer not to experience it”) not that, but rather something else. Have I understood you properly?
Nope, I guess it’s yet another misunderstanding. I have no problem with “I haven’t read this and mean to keep it that way”, either. It’s the part “an improvement on the original” that I (mis)took as passing judgment on the (unread) original.
It is indeed irrational to pass judgment over something without having read it, but the modal qualifier in this context specifies that her character “MAY BE an improvement on the original,” which I don’t judge to be impermissible, considering I haven’t heard good things about the story. I can’t see how that could be construed as a (direct) dig at Twilight, but then, I may be under an authorship bias.
(As for not reading Twilight, well, to be more accurate, I have come up with an informal probability estimate based on multiple secondary and tertiary sources, indicating the likelihood of my deriving more fun and profit from reading, say, Jane Austen than Twilight. Accordingly, I have arranged my reading list in that order: Don’t attempt Twilight till you have exhausted the best Jane Austen has to offer.
Do you feel that this guess of mine is rooted in misperceptions? At the risk of jumping to conclusions myself, your rebuke could be taken to (indirectly) imply that I have underestimated my chances of liking it. Moreover, I have this less-than-entirely-rational tendency to favor strong personal recommendations over judgments supported by diffuse criteria like one or two reviews obviously prioritizing entertainment value over accuracy and what I’ve been told in passing by such-and-such people. Bear in mind, it is invariably the participants whose personalities enliven a romance and make it interesting for me, and it is already established that I’m not enamored of Bella or Edward as portrayed in the opening chapters of Luminosity.
Still, don’t hesitate to speak your mind. Maybe I’ve misjudged them from limited exposure, or maybe I’ll like something else about the story. If you do recommend Twilight and I hate it, I promise not to hold it against you. I will only inform you that in this case, you’ve misjudged the compatibility of that novel with my tastes. Either way, the answer may provide you with a data point to help improve any future recommendations.)
Accordingly, I have arranged my reading list in that order: Don’t attempt Twilight till you have exhausted the best Jane Austen has to offer.
You may be interested in Gwern’s marvellous essay Culture is not about Esthetics, which does the numbers on just how ridiculously unfeasible it is trying even to keep up with the best.
I disagree with some of the assumptions in that essay.
Suppose that I were to actually read a hundred sci fi novels in a couple years, what would happen? Speaking from experience (more with fantasy than sci fi,) it would cause me to become a lot pickier with respect to sci fi novels. I’ve gone from being rather undiscriminating to a point where I can only assign a single digit percentage likelihood that I’ll enjoy any particular sci fi or fantasy book given the knowledge that it’s won an award such as a Hugo or Nebula.
Now, from this, shouldn’t we conclude that the market is already oversaturated? After all, if there are already so many works that they can drive my expected utility from reading another work in the genre so low, the last thing we need is more, isn’t it?
Not really, because what a good author is actively trying to do is create works that will be interesting to audiences in light of existing expectations and literary influences. Tropes evolve, and a savvy writer is one who’s prepared to account for a savvy audience. Writing isn’t a commodities market, it’s an arms race.
Of course, there are clearly reasons other than aesthetics driving the production of popular culture. Humans use shared culture such as media consumption for social bonding. It’s much easier for people to bond by exchanging impressions of shared media consumption than unshared, so for socialization purposes individuals benefit by sorting their media consumption so that a significant proportion is shared with peer groups. One method is to sort by historical esteem, or “classics,” and another is to sort by recency. Many societies throughout history have gotten by mainly using the former, but in a society with higher values of intellectual progressivism, it’s probably inevitable that reverence of historical works will be a weaker motivator, and besides which, the more quickly culture changes the more strained the relevance of old classics will be.
I’ve gone from being rather undiscriminating to a point where I can only assign a single digit percentage likelihood that I’ll enjoy any particular sci fi or fantasy book given the knowledge that it’s won an award such as a Hugo or Nebula.
It’s not clear to me that you’re disagreeing substantially with what I think or what the essay says. Culture is not about aesthetics, it’s about interacting with other humans—those who even pay lots of attention to the aesthetics (e.g., me) are very much in the minority.
I’m saying that there are both aesthetic and non aesthetic reasons driving the production of media. If we were to halt media production, I think that would lead to aesthetic concerns despite the large preexisting body of works, but I don’t think that those concerns are the only or necessarily even the primary reason for continued media production.
Then I think one of us is misunderstanding the content of the article. I think I do disagree with some of the content, particularly given this comment. If I had found the reverse of that observation to be true, I would have a very different position regarding the value of creating more works of fiction.
I think there are differences you’re regarding as important that I’m not regarding as important—I could disagree with a lot of the details, but I think the broad thrust of it is both original and good. I’m still digesting what I think of the essay and mentally writing a Rocknerd post about it.
Yeah, I missed the “may be” part. As for whether it is worth trying to read for you, I have no opinion. It works better as an audiobook, though, mainly because the person reading it did a very good job.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone claim that Luminosity is not an improvement on the original (even people who don’t like Luminosity), and some of my fans like Twilight too.
Having read and liked both, I claim that Luminosity is not an improvement on the original, it’s just a different story, if based on the same premises. Like the Twilight series, it has its up and down moments, though unlike Twilight, it generally gets better written as it unfolds. Presumably because you didn’t have an editor to make you go back and rewrite marginal parts into something publishable.
Nah, who am I kidding, the original is better written, it has far less of dull narrative.
Well, I suspect that if you were to ask a Twilight forum, you’d get plenty of people claiming that (many without reading Luminosity). It’s not clear to me what follows from those claims, though, if anything.
“She was not Jeffreyssai.”
Actually, I have a question: Why do there seem to be no Viharts in fiction? Admittedly, she herself is pretty unique and awesome that way, but I haven’t come across even one character displaying that type of intelligent, feminine charisma in any vaguely consistent manner. In fact, there seem to be very few genuinely smart, curious and independent-thinking women in fiction, in contrast to very many who we are TOLD are smart and charismatic. (Some even have the balls to preach that, in reality, intelligence and charisma exclude each other. If I believed that, I’d “come out of the closet” as asexual.)
I hope this is due to my own inexperience. If not, I suspect this is mainly because, like in ancient cultures, over 90% of modern fiction consists of a handful of Great Themes worked and reworked into every story. And these “ready-made art powder, just add water” plot points only have roles reserved for traditional innocent types, self-righteous bitches who exist to force the author’s vision of just norms down everyone’s throats, their negative stereotypes, femme fatales, etc. However, I personally haven’t discovered Vihart-like characters even in creative and original works; not that I’ve read many of those. I hope our culture, at large, isn’t simply unconscious of (or insensible to :( ) this kind of beauty.
Tragically, I just realized that I’ve encountered no more than a handful of attractive women of any kind in fiction. And that includes none from HPMOR, which definitely isn’t recycled gunk. I have read a few chapters of Luminosity. Bella may be an improvement on the original, which I haven’t read and mean to keep it that way, but no, she’s not particularly charismatic yet. (I must confess, I don’t like her at all because she’s way too stuffy. That’s not a great failing or anything; most people are.)
Bella’s character (and most everything else about the story) improves over the course of the book. I also think the narrator of book two probably has more raw likeability than Bella.
Thanks, I hoped it’d be something like that. :)
Does this not strike you as a rather irrational statement? Passing judgement over something you freely admit you have no first-hand knowledge of?
There are lots of things I’ve never experienced, which I prefer not to experience.
Are you suggesting that all such preferences are “irrational”?
Or does reading Twilight belong to a more restricted class of experiences for which that’s true?
Not at all, refraining from an experience is a perfectly rational action. It’s passing judgement on something you are not familiar with that is not.
Huh.
So, I infer from this that you consider halcyon’s position (“I haven’t read this and mean to keep it that way”) a judgment on something they are unfamiliar with, but consider my position (“I haven’t experienced this and prefer not to experience it”) not that, but rather something else.
Have I understood you properly?
Nope, I guess it’s yet another misunderstanding. I have no problem with “I haven’t read this and mean to keep it that way”, either. It’s the part “an improvement on the original” that I (mis)took as passing judgment on the (unread) original.
It is indeed irrational to pass judgment over something without having read it, but the modal qualifier in this context specifies that her character “MAY BE an improvement on the original,” which I don’t judge to be impermissible, considering I haven’t heard good things about the story. I can’t see how that could be construed as a (direct) dig at Twilight, but then, I may be under an authorship bias.
(As for not reading Twilight, well, to be more accurate, I have come up with an informal probability estimate based on multiple secondary and tertiary sources, indicating the likelihood of my deriving more fun and profit from reading, say, Jane Austen than Twilight. Accordingly, I have arranged my reading list in that order: Don’t attempt Twilight till you have exhausted the best Jane Austen has to offer.
Do you feel that this guess of mine is rooted in misperceptions? At the risk of jumping to conclusions myself, your rebuke could be taken to (indirectly) imply that I have underestimated my chances of liking it. Moreover, I have this less-than-entirely-rational tendency to favor strong personal recommendations over judgments supported by diffuse criteria like one or two reviews obviously prioritizing entertainment value over accuracy and what I’ve been told in passing by such-and-such people. Bear in mind, it is invariably the participants whose personalities enliven a romance and make it interesting for me, and it is already established that I’m not enamored of Bella or Edward as portrayed in the opening chapters of Luminosity.
Still, don’t hesitate to speak your mind. Maybe I’ve misjudged them from limited exposure, or maybe I’ll like something else about the story. If you do recommend Twilight and I hate it, I promise not to hold it against you. I will only inform you that in this case, you’ve misjudged the compatibility of that novel with my tastes. Either way, the answer may provide you with a data point to help improve any future recommendations.)
You may be interested in Gwern’s marvellous essay Culture is not about Esthetics, which does the numbers on just how ridiculously unfeasible it is trying even to keep up with the best.
I disagree with some of the assumptions in that essay.
Suppose that I were to actually read a hundred sci fi novels in a couple years, what would happen? Speaking from experience (more with fantasy than sci fi,) it would cause me to become a lot pickier with respect to sci fi novels. I’ve gone from being rather undiscriminating to a point where I can only assign a single digit percentage likelihood that I’ll enjoy any particular sci fi or fantasy book given the knowledge that it’s won an award such as a Hugo or Nebula.
Now, from this, shouldn’t we conclude that the market is already oversaturated? After all, if there are already so many works that they can drive my expected utility from reading another work in the genre so low, the last thing we need is more, isn’t it?
Not really, because what a good author is actively trying to do is create works that will be interesting to audiences in light of existing expectations and literary influences. Tropes evolve, and a savvy writer is one who’s prepared to account for a savvy audience. Writing isn’t a commodities market, it’s an arms race.
Of course, there are clearly reasons other than aesthetics driving the production of popular culture. Humans use shared culture such as media consumption for social bonding. It’s much easier for people to bond by exchanging impressions of shared media consumption than unshared, so for socialization purposes individuals benefit by sorting their media consumption so that a significant proportion is shared with peer groups. One method is to sort by historical esteem, or “classics,” and another is to sort by recency. Many societies throughout history have gotten by mainly using the former, but in a society with higher values of intellectual progressivism, it’s probably inevitable that reverence of historical works will be a weaker motivator, and besides which, the more quickly culture changes the more strained the relevance of old classics will be.
I would have guessed the opposite.
It’s not clear to me that you’re disagreeing substantially with what I think or what the essay says. Culture is not about aesthetics, it’s about interacting with other humans—those who even pay lots of attention to the aesthetics (e.g., me) are very much in the minority.
I’m saying that there are both aesthetic and non aesthetic reasons driving the production of media. If we were to halt media production, I think that would lead to aesthetic concerns despite the large preexisting body of works, but I don’t think that those concerns are the only or necessarily even the primary reason for continued media production.
Well, yeah. We’re still not disagreeing at all.
Then I think one of us is misunderstanding the content of the article. I think I do disagree with some of the content, particularly given this comment. If I had found the reverse of that observation to be true, I would have a very different position regarding the value of creating more works of fiction.
I think there are differences you’re regarding as important that I’m not regarding as important—I could disagree with a lot of the details, but I think the broad thrust of it is both original and good. I’m still digesting what I think of the essay and mentally writing a Rocknerd post about it.
Yeah, I missed the “may be” part. As for whether it is worth trying to read for you, I have no opinion. It works better as an audiobook, though, mainly because the person reading it did a very good job.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone claim that Luminosity is not an improvement on the original (even people who don’t like Luminosity), and some of my fans like Twilight too.
Having read and liked both, I claim that Luminosity is not an improvement on the original, it’s just a different story, if based on the same premises. Like the Twilight series, it has its up and down moments, though unlike Twilight, it generally gets better written as it unfolds. Presumably because you didn’t have an editor to make you go back and rewrite marginal parts into something publishable.
Nah, who am I kidding, the original is better written, it has far less of dull narrative.
Okay. Now I have seen that claimed.
Well, I suspect that if you were to ask a Twilight forum, you’d get plenty of people claiming that (many without reading Luminosity). It’s not clear to me what follows from those claims, though, if anything.
Ah!
Yes, misunderstanding.
Thanks for clarifying.