4doorsmorewhores
No bio...
User ID: 223
4doorsmorewhores
1yr ago
I'm hesitant to engage with these year old necro comments and am skeptical of any productivity, but I read slightly more of this terrible fanfiction after the original comments and am more affirmed in my criticism.
Litigating the specific fact claims back and forth are kind of meaningless, obviously either of us can easily pull up sophistries based on one weak line, a misuse of a phrase, or technical issue etc. Others have also done that well and you can read it.
The reason I dislike it is because the dialogue is wooden, cliche-ridden, hackish, frequently offputting, and the characterization is inaccurate or implausible at different times.
Many are familiar with the tropes and discussions around the phrase "The Curtains are blue" speaking to over-analysis by literary critics [or their lower-functioning cousins, proponents of 'Media Literacy'] of minute and unimportant details, and there is also push back by those who think Blue Curtains complaint style discourse is thought terminating and glosses over real meaning. But in either case that's close to the level of intro literary review you would do in an literature class, you find symbolism, explain what it means, and then maybe relate it to the pacing or tone of the story or experiences of characters themselves, some will go further and map it to the social and historical circumstances of the author to learn about what it says about 1820s Spain or Russia for example, and that follows into Death of the Author discourse which has also become more popularized. A more advanced literary review will likely move past the symbols, and try to mesh out why and where they were used to specifically understand exactly what the author was trying to say when they picked them. [Most university undergraduates will never move to this stage and beyond]. You also have some people who evade this, and are more simulationist [to borrow Pathfinder terminology] and err more on the side of explaining what would likely happen in their interesting fiction, but not trying to tell you what this means for you, albeit still likely being colored by their personal beliefs or historical circumstances [Think Brandon Sanderson's worldbuilding]. Here's Tarkovksy on Symbolism:
Everybody asks me what things mean in my films. This is terrible! An artist doesn't have to answer for his meanings. I don't think so deeply about my work - I don't know what my symbols may represent. What matters to me is that they arouse feelings, any feelings you like, based on whatever your inner response might be. If you look for a meaning, you'll miss everything that happens. Thinking during a film interferes with your experience of it. Take a watch into pieces, it doesn't work. Similarly with a work of art, there's no way it can be analyzed without destroying it.
I apologize for that long sidebar of how I perceive the modern state of literary criticism. But amazingly the writing of this terrible piece sidesteps all levels of it entirely. The characters just speak cliched platitudes, never having any depth beyond the most cursory, nor any satisfying growth or understanding of eachother. A modern person encountering someone from middle-earth or wherever would have more preconceived notions because of our media tradition, similarly if Superman was real, people would have an easier time digesting it since we have 100 years of Superman media, as opposed to if we had none at all. The prose makes Ayn Rand look like Shakespeare. It is barely half a degree better than something like
#1: I prefer social democracy because more people can get what they want
#2: But they might want bad things. That would be bad
#1: I don't think so
4doorsmorewhores
1yr ago
I strongly disagree with the assertion that it's a re-framing of issues for me to say "The party will achieve these goals" in spite of your insistence that 'Some other arbitrarily-chosen goals are more important'. But fortunately for us the aforementioned convention is now over. It's also wrong to assume that the preferences of single-issue voters for example don't matter, and that a political change is only worthwhile if it's sweeping (Good the enemy of perfect etc etc). If literally the only difference between 2 major parties was the guns, that still represents the loss of lifestyle, tens of thousands of (Canadian) dollars, food procurement, etc. If only difference between the GOP and the Democrats in the USA was that the Democrats wanted to ban all cars, would you have a pithy expression for people who rejoice when they are allowed to keep them?
Anyways based on your tone I'm presuming you are preoccupied with culture war issues. In that case the CPC affirmed their intent to ban trans medical procedures for all children. Getting rid of diversity hiring practices, keeping freedom of speech. Pretty much all of the main culture war threads.
4doorsmorewhores
1yr ago
I don't think that's anywhere near the standard to which (especially top level) comments are held. A short comment without any context or analysis, and a response of suggesting I read 2500 posts by someone to figure it out, the totally unfounded assertion that nobody else needed a summary (Based on what 7 replies? Your comment was posted at like 3 AM EST and I asked my question 8 hours later), and finally "If you don't get it, just minimize it and move on?"
4doorsmorewhores
7mo ago
The squirrel bit a guy I think. If a murderer built a house that tries to punch your balls every time you walked by I'd probably want to demolish it.
4doorsmorewhores
7mo ago
A plain reading of my comment is clearly that this policy is eminently reasonable, these things happen frequently and are mundane, and this story's notoriety is unrelated to its merit, but the man involved is flooding social media for personal gain. That's not enough analysis for a reply to a thread?
4doorsmorewhores
1yr ago
Wasn't that already the case? Incel as a popular phrase was coined in the 90s by some lesbian, do you remember hearing any panic or concern about it in the 90s or 00s before it became an issue for some men?
4doorsmorewhores
1yr ago
That's why I bring up the art analogy. Obviously by and large we all recognize that lots of AI content is meaningless slop, but for all we know this guy put in a few hours of work crafting response and questions for the chatbot for this specific output. Is the post only worthwhile if it's an explanation of that process(which I recognize is very unlikely to even have occured)?
4doorsmorewhores
2yr ago
I'm not sure the responses at a single comedy venue are a good stand-in for culture war attitudes, people might just think he's an asshole and not like him.
Regardless of that his response is deeply pathetic: https://i.imgur.com/jRyHIK2.jpg
He's doing the Boo-urns thing, talking like a dweeb "It's almost as if" and is way more insecure than the richest man in the world should present himself as.
4doorsmorewhores
1yr ago
I haven't nor do I intend to read this fanfiction, nor have I played Pathfinder, and I don't know some of the terminology used here beyond a google search ("Isekai"). That said, I have problems. Someone from the Pathfinder universe (especially with spell training like a Paladin) would probably be familiar with food preservation magic since it exists, I also find it very personally offputting to shoehorn into a story about a child (admittedly one who considers herself an adult) about how actually most of the time when people get raped, they didn't actually get raped since nobody had a knife to threaten them. There are probably a dozen examples like this where her being from Pathfinder doesn't actually mesh with the story very well. Again, haven't read it, other than the excerpts here, but if there is nothing interesting between the comparison of her Medieval-ish world or her oath as a Paladin and our modern world, and it's just a generic medieval fish out of water tale, why is she a Paladin at all? Is it an in-joke between the Pathfinder player author? Does it mean anything?
I don't really think The Motte is the place for literary criticism, since it's a largely non-rational practice. But god, the writing here is just bad. Maybe if you're a direct person who likes it when characters spew forth punctuated idea after punctuated idea it's the right pace for you, but these paragraphs are a hard read. If you want worlds-colliding or a reflection of modernity fantasy fiction, there is lots of stuff you can find with enjoyable prose. Try /r/fantasy. I don't get the giddy appeal of having the author stand-in character give a "glorious" "refreshing" look at our modern age. I've seen dozens of posts here with better rundowns of how things operate and the problems and virtues with society. This strikes me as midwit-tier.
4doorsmorewhores
2yr ago
What does this person's melodramatic blog post have to do with any sort of Culture War?
4doorsmorewhores
7mo ago
Animals are property.
4doorsmorewhores
1yr ago
🏆🏆🏆
4doorsmorewhores
2yr ago
Do you genuinely believe Joe Biden is in a near vegetative state powered only by drugs, and lacking normal cognitive abilities?
4doorsmorewhores
2yr ago
I don't understand how that can be your genuine belief when the thread after the "rulebreaker" spawned like 6 well-written and detailed responses precisely agreeing with the thrust of the "low effort needing more" comment.
Let me be precise: I believe it seriously erodes the potential quality of discussion when your characterization (wearing the mod hat) of my question is an outlandish strawman yet there are half a dozen other people with high-effort replies saying to the effect "That's mostly true, and here is why its such a problem that lgbt-aligned people are acting that way."
If it's your intention to discourage people from giving viewpoints you disagree with that's fine, just say so. Otherwise it seems that the low-effort comment which I "should've ignored" was expressing a genuine sentiment that lots of people see reflected as true and impactful.
4doorsmorewhores
4mo ago
The fact that you needed to pick a contrived example (Why just NATO, why not other western countries? why current defense % GDP spending and not a historical average? why is 65% of them doing it but 35% of them not doing it considered a success? why aren't we just comparing total or % of GDP expenditures against the USA's numbers?) sort of proves the point I was making. If Italy produced 80% of the EU's steel, whether or not there is some norm or rule in the EU rules or treaties, I would find it pretty fucking rich if 5 other countries made it an international incident that Italy isn't using it's steel output for X or Y industry after those same countries neglected their production and investment for years.
4doorsmorewhores
7mo ago
Yeah someone should make a discord (cringe i'm sorry) or a telegram channel for fast cool witty motte update/analysis
4doorsmorewhores
11mo ago
This is a bait and switch argument. At first the claim was "The party has current problems because instead of healthy party politics deciding leaders, they anoint whoever has the most name recognition or seniority in the previous regime", now it's "After a somewhat rigorous and unpredictable primary process with votes and wins all over the place, eventually they coalesced around a candidate who they thought was best (And who did in fact end up winning), which proves he was anointed"
4doorsmorewhores
1yr ago
I appreciate the dozen different irrelevant counter claims or suggestions that the opposite may be true, but I think this all demonstrates why accusing random strangers' actions of being performative is just a boo-outgroup exercise.
Reading this whole thread is surreal and it's cognitively difficult for me to engage with the entire girth of it, but at the very start is seems empirically wrong to me to suggest that Jews don't assimilate enough. Statistically speaking there's a jew in new york whose grandpa moved to brooklyn and learned english, and his dad moved to italy and learned italian, and his dad moved to austria and learned austrian, and his dad had to learn greek, and each of them invested in a local business along the way. As a thought experiment amongst people you personally know count the % of chinese immigrants who speak chinese at home vs the number of jews who speak hebrew lol.
4doorsmorewhores
2yr ago
Thank you. I was and will continue to do so
4doorsmorewhores
2yr ago
Do you mean to say it's unjust? I know lots of families in my community that home schooled their kids and they seem perfectly nice.
4doorsmorewhores
2yr ago
"Women as a population group also hate football. They hate guns. They hate cars. They hate physical competition. They hate bitcoin. They hate woodworking."
Do you have any evidence of this? These seem like outdated stereotypes unfit for our humble rationalist community.
4doorsmorewhores
7mo ago
If the cops show up to my house for some stupid reason and want me to go sit in the squad car while they do whatever, and I thrash and kick and headbutt one of them like a BLM protester then yes, I do think it is fine to punish me for that, even if the original reason they were there didn't pan out. If you're more libertarian and completely disagree that the state and its agents should have some good faith wiggle room for mistakes or best practices that fine, but there's no sense in us spending 8 comments to reach that impasse.
4doorsmorewhores
10mo ago
Why would Mr Musk or any other owner be forced to sell their stake to PMC corporations and not other rich people share his goals or ideology?
Obviously. It's a large financial and time commitment as any when it comes to kids (one of the largest time/"lifestyle"/financial changes your life will ever have) but the guy posting above said despite being anti-gun the idea of schools teaching his kids makes him want to go shoot dozens of people to death, if he feels that strongly about it I think it's a good reminder he absolutely has the option to take them out of school.
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