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PaperclipPerfector  23d ago (text post)   3368 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for May 24, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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People really like Sherlock Holmes stories, to the point that they're probably the best candidate for the progenitor of the entire Mystery genre. To those here who enjoy these stories, would you mind putting on your over-analysis caps and explaining what it is about the stories that you enjoy?

I think for me they're "intelligence and competence porn". Roughly, it's the idea that an intelligent and competent person, put into a dark and evil situation, can use the light of reason to restore order and uncover hidden secrets. Thriller novels, of the techno- and military- varieties, also do that for me. As with porn, I worry that over-consumption by susceptible demographics can induce unrealistic expectations of human behavior. ;-)

It took a couple of read-throughs of HPMOR for me to get that a) Harry was not being held up by EY as a role model, and b) the main moral of the story is that (spoilers all) he left a trail of pointless wreckage as he broke anything that got in the way of him doing what he thought was right, and if not for the vow Quirrelmort had him take, he would have broken everything.

Today I learned Yudkowsky did a Harry Potter Fanfic. The more you know.

It is linked under library on lesswrong, so it is kind of the top of the canon as far as rationalist fiction goes. Other major works are:

  • Scott's Unsong (Original setting)
  • Alexander Wales' "Worth the Candle" (Original setting)
  • Alicorn's "Luminosity" (Twilight 'fan'-fiction, of all things)
  • Eliezer et al's planecrash (collaborative glowfic, Dath Ilianian isekaied to the world of the RPG Pathfinder)

All of these authors also have shorter fiction. If you are unsure, I would start with something shorter and see if you like the style. There are also audiobooks of HPMOR and Unsong.

Note that Alexander Wales also has an ongoing work, Thresholder (currently at 650,000 words, vs. 1.7 million for Worth the Candle).

1.7 million? That just seems ridiculous. Why does this work need to be three times as long as war and peace?

Why does this work need to be three times as long as war and peace?

Because it's being written for narrative addicts. People enjoy the altered flow-like state created by reading a long narrative for hours at a stretch, their own consciousness and volition being overridden by the flow of the story. For such people, the story concluding is a problem because it breaks the state, while additional length is pure benefit, because it allows for more contiguous false-memory and thus more verisimilitude to the experience.

People enjoy the altered flow-like state created by reading a long narrative for hours at a stretch, their own consciousness and volition being overridden by the flow of the story.

Narrative-gooning.

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I remember this post of yours where you floated psychoanalyzing the mindset of rational fiction after finishing Worth the Candle. I’d be interested in hearing what you had to say about the genre based on what you’re saying here.

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Web serials are more like reading a series of novels.

I would guess most series clock in below this. Harry Potter for example is only about a million words.

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Are you not familiar with web serial novels? The Wandering Inn may well hit 17 million words sometime next year.

It's hard for me to fathom who has the mental bandwidth for this.

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