Quote from: Hydra009 on April 09, 2022, 05:49:48 PM...And like 20 years later, I'm going to tell you that he's gay over Twitter.

I was following the books when they first coming out. Honestly, I've thought Dumbledore was gay back then when I read it. And didn't even think on it that people would think otherwise. Yeeears later, when I saw the discussions around the web, I was surprised but couldn't remember why I thought that way, and it turned out a lot of adults did too when we talked about it with a few friends. Then as many people said it, it was that he didn't have any relations and described his relationship with him as "We were more than friends". It's too subtle because back then it was supposed to be that way in a children's book. There wasn't an open fight about putting gay-trans gender characters in children's books and movies, in media. I mean people didn't insist on this kind of stuff openly. Also think about it like this. Writing for children and young adults are the way to go with fantasy, if you want to be read and make money. Writing a high quality adult fantasy book that would be widely picked up is immensely, ridiculously difficult. You could ask that to any editor. So the border line becomes graphic violence and sex scenes and that doesn't make an adult book in my opinion.

Young generations, and by that I mean people 10 to 15 years younger than me are way too literal compared to us. Because they are social media; meme, caption culture kids. Things are written down, pasted on to each other, captioned over and over again. It's a weird 'written' culture that is akin to the old 'spoken' culture before printing press. There is little space for imagination and what is called information between the lines.

When I talked about Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles with a few young people in recent years, how I saw them and liked them 20 something years ago, it was almost like we were talking about different books. They don't get why I think something is when there is no solid, clear indication of it. It's really very interesting and coincidentally Rice's case was a very suitable example content wise. For some reason, they have a very strong desire to see the protagonist as a love interest, for example lol. But the thing is in Rice's universe, vampires see humans like the roast chicken we see on the plate and she doesn't compromise. So their desire never gets satisfied. Vampires don't even have any actual relations with humans. So they don't like that. When I said because she is reading human species from a fantasy one, they've told me there was nothing pointing to that kind of reading at all. LOLOL

Well, literature doesn't work that way. I know it sounds too big. Writers shouldn't compromise while writing, but one era's subtle detail becomes other era's lie. And in my opinion, there are quite interesting things happening there from perception-reception theories to cultural appropriation...and then some. I swear, human understanding of things keep changing so fast, nothing can catch it.

Quote from: drunkenshoe on April 13, 2022, 11:54:08 AMWriting for children and young adults are the way to go with fantasy, if you want to be read and make money. Writing a high quality adult fantasy book that would be widely picked up is immensely, ridiculously difficult. You could ask that to any editor. So the border line becomes graphic violence and sex scenes and that doesn't make an adult book in my opinion.

Hmm.  You may be right about that.  Also, children/YA are probably more likely to pick up the fantasy book in the first place.

Pitching children/YA fantasy: So these kids stumble through a closet and into the magical land of Azerolands and a wise old wizard tells these twins that they're the chosen one but we don't know which one is the chosen one and orcs attack so they have to find the dragon refuge to get the amulet of kings from the last dragon before the evil sorceror Evilor can get his evil hands on it.  Also, one of the major characters is a Jesus allegory.

Pitching adult fantasy: So the main character is Shadowweaver Darkbane and he lives in the land of Dark Shadowmoorspire.  He was sentenced to the dungeon for a crime he didn't commit and his family was massacred.  Now, he's back to kill the evil queen - his sister.  But not before she starts a 5-way war that ends of up killing or molesting half the cast in vicious battles.  Only the one with the best story will win.

QuoteYoung generations, and by that I mean people 10 to 15 years younger than me are way too literal compared to us. Because they are social media; meme, caption culture kids. Things are written down, pasted on to each other, captioned over and over again. It's a weird 'written' culture that is akin to the old 'spoken' culture before printing press. There is little space for imagination and what is called information between the lines.

Interesting hypothesis, but I'm not quite sold on that, seeing as my generation has a "written culture" as well - plenty of comics and captions and seemingly obvious stuff spelled out.

In fact, I'm not so sure we're all that good at reading between the lines ourselves.  I know some warhammer people who don't seem to have gotten the memo that the whole setting is a cautionary tale: endless war and rampant xenophobia is a bad thing and leads to bad results.  No society that goes to war for generations comes out of it happy.

QuoteFor some reason, they have a very strong desire to see the protagonist as a love interest, fro example lol.

IIRC, the protagonist as a love interest of the vampire is somewhat common in vampire stories.  Buffy, Twilight, Underworld, etc.

QuoteBut the thing is in Rice's universe, vampires see humans like the chicken we see on the plate and she doesn't compromise. So their desire never gets satisfied. Vampires don't even have any actual relations with humans.

From a vampire's perspective, human-vampire romantic relations is a combination of zoophilia and pedophilia, so yeah, not kosher.

Had fun at "Uncharted". Kept score of the wonky bits. Had to take my shoes off to continue the count.

Dumbledore turning out to be gay is one thing. I missed that when I read the book, but whatever.

Where in any of the seven books is Hermione said to be black? You'd think her skin color would come up at least once, considering how inbred the wizarding world is. Would have given a different angle to that whole "mud blood" thing too. I swear, it seems like the author thinks she can win points just be retroactively declaring her characters to be minorities.

Quote from: Hydra009 on April 13, 2022, 12:40:35 PMHmm.  You may be right about that.  Also, children/YA are probably more likely to pick up the fantasy book in the first place.

Yep. I've watched a few editors in the field explaining the situation and talked to a few published British writers (not well known, but selling) online about it some time ago. Apparently, it has various dynamics from people being able to have places like Amazon printing their own just like that without being accepted by an editor to the genre being worn out with certain themes...etc beyond the one you mentioned.
   

QuotePitching children/YA fantasy: So these kids stumble through a closet and into the magical land of Azerolands and a wise old wizard tells these twins that they're the chosen one but we don't know which one is the chosen one and orcs attack so they have to find the dragon refuge to get the amulet of kings from the last dragon before the evil sorceror Evilor can get his evil hands on it.  Also, one of the major characters is a Jesus allegory.

Pitching adult fantasy: So the main character is Shadowweaver Darkbane and he lives in the land of Dark Shadowmoorspire.  He was sentenced to the dungeon for a crime he didn't commit and his family was massacred.  Now, he's back to kill the evil queen - his sister.  But not before she starts a 5-way war that ends of up killing or molesting half the cast in vicious battles.  Only the one with the best story will win.

Are these actual plots or have you made them up on the spot?

See, the difference is not just about the fantasy elements, it is about how the text is written. The vocabulary count, how the plot is handled. (Twilight has around 25 K word vocabulary. While Ursula has 85 K +, Rice probably has around 60 K I'm guessing. Buffy is a far less, it's a script.)  Not the word count of course. The vocabulary which makes the 'how' part of how something's written, not what kind of content or theme is based on. It could be very simple, absurd or even ridiculous but written by a master who knows what he is doing, it is gonna stay on the bookshelves for decades. It doesn't have to be popular. How much sense does it make. Of course, there is the rarest and most precious kind of writer who invents something unique, and then it is not going to matter much if his vocabulary was close to a 100K or not. But, ay there's the rub. That's the real thing, it is very hard to come by and most of it has happened thousands of years ago. There is a legitimate reason why good editors and literary critics are fucking major league assholes. Because while we say, 'very hard to come by' to feel good, actually this doesn't happen, lol. As you brought it up, almost everything put out there automatically falls into some allegoric category, which we all are familiar. Otherwise, it wouldn't be recognisable. Creating an original content from what is familiar, in an unfamiliar manner consistent in itself that makes sense to different culture/class of people, that moves people to push their horizons, and become universal is the real deal. That requires a genius. There are only several in history. Taking something in essence everyone knows and creating something new; a new way of looking at things... It's crazy, man. Fucking crazy. But then there is a man called Cervantes, and for all our sakes we should ignore the son of bitch in this conversation.

(This subject is also related to another phenomenon. Today, movies are turned into simple booklets as novels/short stories after they come out and it sells. From my personal point of view, it is an abomination. Because the difference between something created as literature and something created as movie from a script -although they are both written material-  is that the former has the limit as far as the reader's imagination goes - which is virtually infinite and unique to every reader- while a movie is what we see something written from someone else's imagination. And a movie in most cases compared to a book has to show you something to be believable and make sense. Not tell it. A book can tell it, show it, describe it; can do it in many different forms. The between the lines space of a movie is always smaller than a book. That's the natural structure of the medium.  These are the main reasons why we generally think a movie sucks, if we have read the book it's based on, exceptions aside. And when it is reversed this time the booklet sucks, but then how can it not? And apart from its form, why is it even called a book, ffs.)

QuoteIn fact, I'm not so sure we're all that good at reading between the lines ourselves.  I know some warhammer people who don't seem to have gotten the memo that the whole setting is a cautionary tale: endless war and rampant xenophobia is a bad thing and leads to bad results.  No society that goes to war for generations comes out of it happy.

LOL. Yeah, I get it. While that's the personal imagination unique to every person part, I think it is also related to what I was saying about literal mindedness. Now, lol, I know you'll say that if something there going on an as the big Picture in the world created, clearly described, how is not seeing it literal mindedness? Because there is a paradox with this. Or rather, it is a two ended issue folding out on each other. Literal and metaphoric mindedness. Like the concept of context which is closely related to it. If you start to put things in context -which we do automatically when ponder into things- there will always be another one high up, side ways from some other context to carry it. Where does it end, how do you pick up the right, useful one?

That's about the way of thinking we have developed. We all were born in 20th century. We continue to divide and divide and then name things. We all are children of standart education which is based on 'text culture' beyond a 'written' one. And going further we are 'prose' children. With the invention of modern state, scientific revolutions and most importantly standard education, generations keep move further away from 'poetic thinking'. By 'poetic', I don't mean the genre of poetry, or some accumulation of cheesy literary product filling old books, exactly like I didn't mean/think young generations don't have some 'written culture' and so that's why the meme culture is like a 'verbal' one before the 'written' -again before- the printing press as you took it in my post. (Which is a quite a literal way to take it, don't you think? How can I think a generation or two just coming after me don't have a written culture in the first place.) Because all these can exist together; actually verbal and written culture(s) of any kind have always existed together. And the meme culture is also a reaction to 'things' going on too prose and textual for the last century; to the diminishing verbal culture with a new plane and mediums.

And all that shapes how we think and see, interpret things around us. Be it history, politics or simple daily events.  The negative part of meme culture and the way of thinking that's evolved from it that it reduces and simplifies too much by its nature and in some cases kill a thing's meaning, dynamics of how it occures or happens. Just like too much prose-textual mindedness reduces imagination and dimension of the way of thinking. "Imagination is much more important than knowledge" is not something chic he said. It carries a very important message. Also some sort of a cautionary tale in this case. Also, explaining and pointing out everything on paper or in a movie is related to literal mindedness in audience  too.  It's a demand.

QuoteInteresting hypothesis, but I'm not quite sold on that, seeing as my generation has a "written culture" as well - plenty of comics and captions and seemingly obvious stuff spelled out.

Allow me to give an example from your general posts, but please do not take this as some sort of a negative remark, opinion about your person. It's just a good example. (If there wasn't any difference between the way generations-people think, a change for any direction in any scale, that would be absurd and not to mention very bad.)

You often post shots about order of operations, on how most people do not know about it. By the way, I know that -at least think that- you want people to know/remember very basic things like this, just like you feel about geographical knowledge. I agree with you, and everybody with a lick of sense would. Because you are right. That's not it. I personally care more about people not feeling any responsibility of remembering/knowing things like this than the thing itself.

However, from what I see around on the net, the generations mentioned tend to interpret this as some sort of sign of 'stupidity' and things has gone further away to think that if ballots had some similar equation on it to allow people to vote if solved correctly, things would be different. Because 'math is hard' and you need to have some sort intelligence or higher vision to get it. Math is hard, yeah. But, no. It wouldn't make a smidge of difference in anything. For starters concerning the example, that's not 'Mathematics', maybe at most arithmetics. Yes, Mathematics is related rationality, science, logic...etc, but ordinary people do not use Mathematics in daily life (not need, just not use), they only use the four operations, and it does not come up in some form that they would need to remember or. of op. daily. That's a part of primary school curriculum and everyone who clicked 18 today instead of 0, has passed or will pass that class. But after that, it's safe to say that none of them actually has used it or will use it.

Also, forget the order of operations, people who actually understand/know Mathematics easily miss the allegory you easily recognise and describe up there, appear clueless in face of obvious metaphors, allegories, points made...etc; what's in front of them. You can observe this while interacting engineers. That's not a joke. (It's a generalisation of course and in my opinion it is a legitimate one. Exactly like the generalisation of people in social science with STEM.)

The problem is the understanding; the way of thinking that being aware of things like -again to continue with the same example- order of operations has an affect on perception-reception of people of events around them, is a symptom of literal thinking. An extreme one of that. And it's related to the meme culture because these are pic shots put on the internet to show something, but  it doesn't tell anything about people other than they just don't know or remember that very specific thing. That's it. It gets interpreted in countless ways, gets carried to unreasonable contexts and that produces opinions and visions about people, that society, their culture the world in general. And becomes a rule in a way. Which is ridiculous, because it has nothing to do with real life; the real issues why people act so stupid in a pandemic, what happens in the elections, the crazy conspiracy theories. And nothing can be changed/accomplished by teaching people about these things or by interpreting them as showing how most people are stupid, ignorant...etc because the problem is the feeling the responsibility of learning, remembering, being curious about them that counts. Unfortunately, that has nothing to do with understanding literal things in life. Actually, it's quite the opposite. Taking that kind of responsibility for that kind of knowledge as a human being is required to be learned by completely different means.

QuoteIIRC, the protagonist as a love interest of the vampire is somewhat common in vampire stories.  Buffy, Twilight, Underworld, etc.

From a vampire's perspective, human-vampire romantic relations is a combination of zoophilia and pedophilia, so yeah, not kosher.

Yeah, sure. (Agreed with the second part.) Because they belong to a new era. It's not even 30 years old. Just the fact that the audience desire constantly to see humans -actually themselves- in some work with absolute power, or with super powers explains a lot about our era or what sucks about it.

Anyway, if you take it from the point how rational and consistent those works work in themselves, you'll see they're barren, and fast food kind of products. This is how the themes of some genre gets worn out, thinner and thinner. A few examples from the previous example.

In Rice's universe, not all humans can be transformed to vampires. Most of them die in the process and very few of them survive as the new species. So there is no sure or easy decision; fast food short cuts in the plot. Because vampires are an anomaly of nature, the part of the life map noone knows about. They are a very little group, most of them don't even know each other, and in that little group just several could actually bear the time, change and adopt. The rest go/has gone 'mad' or 'die' because if you can't change, how do you adopt to change? And how many times? They do not have any relations with humans because that's not even a question. A creature like a vampire simply cannot fall in love with a one like human. Why and how it would be? Besides being foods, humans do not, cannot possess anything interesting or attractive for an intelligent being who has lived a couple of hundred years, let alone thousands. Forget thousands, can you imagine living the whole eras of the early modern Europe, and fall in love with a human who was born in 1980s? How do you make sense of it on page, make it believable beyond any action genre?

And their irresistable, violent thirst for blood is coming from not being able to satisfy the simple daily appetite remaining from being a human, drinking-eating, the distort version of some worldly needs. They feel the desire stronger -they feel everything more- as what they are but they can't eat, drink... or satisfy, have any of it. (Like the zombie pirates in the Pirates of the Caribbean in a way, lol.) When we humans eat and drink, we just don't nourish our food need. We satisfy a lot of different things from need for company to pleasure with taste, to go out to do some social place...etc. Countless things. The cycles of a day for example. They can't do that. We constantly change. They never do. We grow up and if lucky, die at an old age. Our one day is not like the other. One day we get up, we are fine, on the next day everything sucks. They always feel the same. And they need to go all that alone. They are indestructible, but say, a vampire can make himself deaf by just screaming. And they are completely vulnerable in their day sleep which is pretty much like death. A few have special powers, but most don't. But you can't sneak upon any vampire. And again no one knows, there is no known rule to any of that. They are beautiful because they are chosen that way as a human as much as possible, so they could allure their food easily. The only gain is to be immortal and unlimited movement.

Being a vampire sucks like hell in Rice's universe. It's a horrible life. (Just like being human in a way, lol.) Because if this had been real, it would have been something like this. Because the story is about how precious it is to be temporary, mortal. It's telling about humans without using any human. Think about the whole existence, the universe, being alive. Thank fuck, we are gonna die. And why all things evolved to end in their scale. Not like True Blood or Vampire Chronicles tv series, or Twilight... No consequences. Just eternal youth, power and beauty. Euphoria. Nothing interesting in it. It just repeats it self, and naturally try to get more extreme and 'sextreme' just to keep going. Does that ring a bell?

(Not just about vampires as a genre in this sense. As much as I love Tolkien, Terry Pratchett is the winner for me with his take on elves in Lords and Ladies.)

Quote from: Blackleaf on April 14, 2022, 09:52:28 AMDumbledore turning out to be gay is one thing. I missed that when I read the book, but whatever.

Where in any of the seven books is Hermione said to be black? You'd think her skin color would come up at least once, considering how inbred the wizarding world is. Would have given a different angle to that whole "mud blood" thing too. I swear, it seems like the author thinks she can win points just be retroactively declaring her characters to be minorities.

She is not from the wizarding world. She is from the muggle world. Her parents are muggles. I have no idea what you are talking about? Where is she black?

If it is some new series or a new movie, it is just a casting thing, it doesn't matter at all if she is black or Chinese to be honest?

Quote from: drunkenshoe on April 14, 2022, 12:19:50 PMAre these actual plots or have you made them up on the spot?

A little of column A, a little of column B.  Some are thinly-veiled references to actual fantasy plots (Chronicles of Narnia, Skyrim, Game of Thrones) or generic references to whole genres ("dark" urban fantasy)

The pitches are intentionally terrible as a sort of satirical take on fantasy novel conventions.  If it helps, imagine Morty pitching his heist script or his awful scorpion story.

Quote from: Hydra009 on April 14, 2022, 12:56:34 PMA little of column A, a little of column B.  Some are thinly-veiled references to actual fantasy plots (Chronicles of Narnia, Skyrim, Game of Thrones) or generic references to whole genres ("dark" urban fantasy)

The pitches are intentionally terrible as a sort of satirical take on fantasy novel conventions.  If it helps, imagine Morty pitching his heist script or his awful scorpion story.

LOL. OK. Hmm you are writing?

Quote from: drunkenshoe on April 14, 2022, 01:05:51 PMLOL. OK. Hmm you are writing?

I've had a couple ideas.  One of them takes place near a swamp, so basically, I've just been researching swamps plus their flora/fauna off and on for the past couple of years without actually writing any scenes.

I want venus flytraps, so there needs to be nitrogen-poor soil, but that means poor crops so how is this small town going to have enough food to support itself?  Maybe...

*several hours later*

Quote from: Hydra009 on April 14, 2022, 01:12:38 PMI've had a couple ideas.  One of them takes place near a swamp, so basically, I've just been researching swamps plus their flora/fauna off and on for the past couple of years without actually writing any scenes.

I want carnivorous plants, so there needs to be nitrogen-poor soil, but that means poor crops so how is this small town going to have enough food to support itself?  Maybe...

*several hours later*

LOL. Yeah, I'm familiar with that very situation. It seems you are on the right path, if I understood anything from writers' general advice.

For example, Pratchett famously said: "Stop reading more fantasy, you have already read enough. Research a [real] subject you are interested in and work that into a fantasy. (Badly paraphrasing, lol.)

So yeah, I say, you should go on. Who doesn't like carnivorous plants?!

Quote from: drunkenshoe on April 14, 2022, 12:44:45 PMShe is not from the wizarding world. She is from the muggle world. Her parents are muggles. I have no idea what you are talking about? Where is she black?

If it is some new series or a new movie, it is just a casting thing, it doesn't matter at all if she is black or Chinese to be honest?

Okay. So, in the Harry Potter universe, the gene pool for witches/wizards was severely limited, making their society essentially a big inbred trailer park. However, some witches/wizards choose to get together with Muggles, and their non-inbred children are often labelled "Mudbloods." Hermione is one of those people.

Now, Hermione was consistently portrayed as white, like most of the British characters. However, there was a sequel play called The Cursed Child, in which Hermione was portrayed as black. The justification was basically, "I didn't ever say she wasn't black."

Here's the thing, if Hermione was black, that would have been very relevant. Think about it. If Hermione had a non-magical parent, that Muggle was most likely the black parent. Probably the mother, because she has the surname Granger, which sounds like a white person name.

So... When Malfoy called Hermione a Mudblood, he was essentially calling her the N word, if her having a black parent was the thing that made her stand out. You'd think that would come up? Clearly, Hermione was not originally planned to be black. Rowling was just trying to turn one of her characters black, in an artificial attempt to make her cast more inclusive.

No, muggles can give birth to wizards, the book mentions several.

"Dad's a muggle, Mum's a witch. Bit of a shock for him when he found out." (From memory, "Chamber of Secrets".)

Re watched "Knight and Day"....still a fun watch. Silly but fun.

Quote from: Gawdzilla Sama on April 15, 2022, 07:49:16 AMNo, muggles can give birth to wizards, the book mentions several.

"Dad's a muggle, Mum's a witch. Bit of a shock for him when he found out." (From memory, "Chamber of Secrets".)

Typically, a "Mudblood" is a magical person born with a non-magical parent. But I did look it up, and apparently neither of Hermione's parents were aware of any magical heritage. Of course, they could have been magic and not known about it. But then, how did they find Hermione? Is it like with Force sensitives, where they use some mysterious method to locate them?

I don't know. Just seems odd. Especially considering how knowledgeable Hermione was or the Wizarding world. How did she even know what a Mudblood was? If she didn't grow up hearing it, why does she care if someone calls her that? I'd think it would be like someone calling me a Flibber Thwapper. Like...okay? I'm crushed, because you called me this word that means nothing to me. Just devastated.

Spells are used to locate candidates for Hogwarts. Beau Batons, et al., may use something different.