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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   795 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for August 15, 2025

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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A few things which irritate me about the LitRPG genre and web fiction in general. You may picture me as comic book guy for purposes of this rant.

  1. Switching tense within sentences. This is rampant and incredibly-obnoxious once one notices. "Hefting his mace, he swung at her as hard as he could." I don't know how this got to be such an entrenched institution but to me it occurs as about on par with having "Like" at the start of every sentence. Is the book still readable? Yes. Does my eye twitch a little every single time? Also yes.
  2. "Whelp I don't immediately understand what's going on so let's just not talk about it at all; let's not even try to figure it out until later in the plot." No use thinking about it now!
  3. Reflexive denigration of 'religion' even in contexts where this is obviously and absurdly inappropriate. "Oh are there literal gods walking the world, enacting their wills and communicating with humans? Well I want nothing to do with that because religion is dumb and stupid and icky and only for low-status people."
  4. "No don't bow to me or call me 'sir'; I don't go in for things like that." This one is everywhere and I find it especially puerile. Hierarchy is crucial in human organizations and we developed the systems we did for a reason. Particularly outside the modern context, public displays of respect and deference are both necessary and for the good of all. People need structure and boundaries to function. Refusing to take on the mantle and respect of authority, if that is your calling, does not serve anyone. It just confuses and scares them.
  5. Related to the above, modern progressive attitudes everywhere. Of course men and women are exactly the same. Of course everyone is having casual, consequence-free sex. Of course anyone who finds meaning in faith is secretly cynically corrupt or else a psycho child molester.

I could go on but I feel better getting at least this much off my chest.

Regarding 3/4/5, there has to be a name for this trope. No matter how alien or unusual the scifi or fantasy setting, somehow the main character is a Perfectly Modern Progressive with all the Correct Opinions on race/sex/religion/whatever, all the good guys share those opinions, and all the bad guys oppose them. It's not quite A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court but along those lines.

Present-mindedness. It’s annoying. It’s like we cannot wrap our heads around the idea that people exist or even could exist that think in ways that we disagree with. I like the Mist Crown series by Sarah Maas, but its so annoying to read a medieval peasant acting like a modern, feminist, atheistic modern American as though the author literally couldn’t conceive of a premodern woman in a premodern world.

I like the Mist Crown series by Sarah Maas, but its so annoying to read a medieval peasant acting like a modern, feminist, atheistic modern American as though the author literally couldn’t conceive of a premodern woman in a premodern world.

She can't!

It’s like we cannot wrap our heads around the idea that people exist or even could exist that think in ways that we disagree with.

Values are fundamental. To a first approximation, no one actually wants values diversity, whether in their fiction or anywhere else. Good things are good, bad things are bad, more bad things are not good.

People like reading about things far away in time or distance because they crave novelty, but they want some recognizable values-coherence to bridge the gap because novelty is not terminal, but values are. Victorians write poems about Brave Horatius at the gate and I enjoy the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Pentateuch for the same reason: because all these deliver a perception of values-consonance across vast gulfs of time and space; we have our cake and eat it too.

The elements you highlight are there because the people generating them consider them terminal, and so their fiction cannot do without them.

Values are fundamental. To a first approximation, no one actually wants values diversity, whether in their fiction or anywhere else. Good things are good, bad things are bad, more bad things are not good.

You would probably hate all of my worldbuilding then. I'm currently working on a science fiction story involving two city-states with distinct value systems which are mutually opposed to each other without one being painted as clearly right or wrong, the philosophical basis on which they ground their outlooks are comprehensible while also being clearly self-serving, and both outlooks would probably be abhorrent and hellish to most modern readers while still serving a pro-social function within the Hobbesian tragedy-of-the-commons that characterises the world they live in. Part of the point is to break apart any conception of “The Good” as much as possible.

I love this kind of shit in storytelling. While I have accepted that shared morality is probably necessary for social cohesion and these values get expressed and reinforced through outlets like fiction, I love it when writers attempt to paint a world entirely in shades of grey while never telling the reader what to think, and find morality tales dubious at best and anger-inducing at worst; they try to simplify complex moral questions down into simple thought-terminating cliches and easy copouts.

I'm probably in the tail-end of the openness-trait, but I value authenticity and aesthetics, and these categories are so loose/vague that I tolerate a lot of diversity of thought. I want more stories which are different and unique in the sense that Made In Abyss is. I feel like art is a kind of escapism, and that making statements about current real-world events undermines this escape

To a first approximation, no one actually wants values diversity, whether in their fiction or anywhere else.

Challenge accepted. ("No one could ever want X". Well then, it is the philosopher's duty to want X. No generalization can be allowed to stand without an exception.)

I agree that value diversity within a given concrete mode of life is hard to consciously wish for in a direct sense (unless you're a certain unique type of individual at any rate). But certainly if we zoom out and consider a patchwork of distinct modes of life, there is no issue. I don't agree with how Islamic societies treat their women, but in an abstract sense, I'm happy that Muslims are able to continue on with their cherished values all the same. (Selfishly, it provides a further object of contemplation for me.) And fiction is an ideal medium for exploring such alternative modes of life.

I don’t value that personally because it’s not authentic to the period or setting. It’s like having a character in 1500s France Google something. To me it’s jarring because people living in premodern times absolutely do not see the world like modern Californians.

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