![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
capri0mni1. The other night, I went searching around YouTube to see if anyone had made videos of individual tales from Children's and Household Tales (I was in the mood for a bedtime story), and came across a video of Philip Pullman talking about his edition of retold tales (for the 200th anniversary of the first edition of the first volume). In that interview, he said that the violence in the Grimms' tales didn't bother him, and isn't really disturbing, because the characters in the stories, aren't drawn as real people, the way proper literary characters are. The blinding of Ashputtle's stepsisters, he said, is not at all like the blinding of Gloucester in King Lear (for example) -- that fairy tale characters are like the paper cutout figures for a shadow play; they don't really have any emotional pain in reaction to the events of the story.
hm. Well. I agree with much that I've seen from Pullman, in the past. But not this. For me, a great part of the power of these stories is to take the events that unfold within them at face value, as fully, emotionally, honest.
2. Tangentially, here's another paragraph I liked from that Tolkien essay "On Fairy-Stories," but did not find quickly, the first time around:
(Quote)
Children are capable, of course, of literary belief, when the story-maker's art is good enough to produce it. That state of mind has been called “willing suspension of disbelief.” But this does not seem to me a good description of what happens. What really happens is that the story-maker proves a successful “sub-creator.” He makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is “true”: it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside. The moment disbelief arises, the spell is broken; the magic, or rather art, has failed. You are then out in the Primary World again, looking at the little abortive Secondary World from outside. If you are obliged, by kindliness or circumstance, to stay, then disbelief must be suspended (or stifled), otherwise listening and looking would become intolerable. But this suspension of disbelief is a substitute for the genuine thing, a subterfuge we use when condescending to games or make-believe, or when trying (more or less willingly) to find what virtue we can in the work of an art that has for us failed.
(End Quote)
3. Got into a conversation in a chat room, tonight, and the other someone asked what sort of things I write, and when I mentioned "poetry," he said he tried to write poetry, once, but is too stupid for it (and too old to keep trying). I think he was trying to flatter me (in the 'ooh! You're so smart!' sort of way).
But.
*sigh*
I don't know why such things bother me, but they do -- a lot.
4. This is an idea I uttered years ago, and lately, it popped up again recently:
You know, how in the 'olden days" computer versions of board games (such as computer chess) you could pick a "demo" mode from a pull-down menu, and the game would play through automatically, and you could just sit back and watch how a possible game might unfold?
Well, I wish there were a computer program that worked in a similar way to help you design your own board game:
It would have a "basic rules" section, where you could fill fields in a table format for such details like: how many players, how moves are determined (roll of dice, drawing cards, spinner, etc.), scoring, etc.
It would have a "design" section, where you could "draw" the spaces on the board, write out the wording of cards you need to draw (if that's required), and then:
It would have a "play through" section, where you could sit back and watch as the game unfolds according to how you've filled in all the fields.
If it doesn't work (if all the pieces get stuck in the middle, for example), you could tweak it.
If it does work, you could print out everything, and have a game to play.
It would probably work best for the simple "Whoever gets to the finish line first wins" sort of games... (Like "Game of Life" or "Candy Land"). But still, wouldn't that be cool?
5. I mentioned this in a comment thread on an access-locked post, today: I do not understand the trope of "A.I. will one day become so powerful that robots will rise up and enslave humans." I mean, literally: I do not understand the logic of this: if computers/robots will one day be so much faster, smarter, and stronger than we are, then what good would it do them to enslave us (slower, dumber, weaker, needing to be fed-and-watered, inherently wasteful and messy as we are)? Seems like it would be far less frustrating just to ignore us...
What fiction trope (if any) do you just not get?
hm. Well. I agree with much that I've seen from Pullman, in the past. But not this. For me, a great part of the power of these stories is to take the events that unfold within them at face value, as fully, emotionally, honest.
2. Tangentially, here's another paragraph I liked from that Tolkien essay "On Fairy-Stories," but did not find quickly, the first time around:
(Quote)
Children are capable, of course, of literary belief, when the story-maker's art is good enough to produce it. That state of mind has been called “willing suspension of disbelief.” But this does not seem to me a good description of what happens. What really happens is that the story-maker proves a successful “sub-creator.” He makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is “true”: it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside. The moment disbelief arises, the spell is broken; the magic, or rather art, has failed. You are then out in the Primary World again, looking at the little abortive Secondary World from outside. If you are obliged, by kindliness or circumstance, to stay, then disbelief must be suspended (or stifled), otherwise listening and looking would become intolerable. But this suspension of disbelief is a substitute for the genuine thing, a subterfuge we use when condescending to games or make-believe, or when trying (more or less willingly) to find what virtue we can in the work of an art that has for us failed.
(End Quote)
3. Got into a conversation in a chat room, tonight, and the other someone asked what sort of things I write, and when I mentioned "poetry," he said he tried to write poetry, once, but is too stupid for it (and too old to keep trying). I think he was trying to flatter me (in the 'ooh! You're so smart!' sort of way).
But.
*sigh*
I don't know why such things bother me, but they do -- a lot.
4. This is an idea I uttered years ago, and lately, it popped up again recently:
You know, how in the 'olden days" computer versions of board games (such as computer chess) you could pick a "demo" mode from a pull-down menu, and the game would play through automatically, and you could just sit back and watch how a possible game might unfold?
Well, I wish there were a computer program that worked in a similar way to help you design your own board game:
It would probably work best for the simple "Whoever gets to the finish line first wins" sort of games... (Like "Game of Life" or "Candy Land"). But still, wouldn't that be cool?
5. I mentioned this in a comment thread on an access-locked post, today: I do not understand the trope of "A.I. will one day become so powerful that robots will rise up and enslave humans." I mean, literally: I do not understand the logic of this: if computers/robots will one day be so much faster, smarter, and stronger than we are, then what good would it do them to enslave us (slower, dumber, weaker, needing to be fed-and-watered, inherently wasteful and messy as we are)? Seems like it would be far less frustrating just to ignore us...
What fiction trope (if any) do you just not get?
no subject
Date: 2013-01-13 05:33 pm (UTC)4. Yes.
5. Human zoo, yes. Slaves? Probably not. Although I suppose that in some places locally evolved biological replication might initially be a more efficient use of resources than rare-earth based technological replication.
no subject
Date: 2013-01-14 08:36 pm (UTC)4. Someone with computer programming skills get on that, huh? I want to give you monies.
5. I think, if cyber-binary based life needed any reason to "keep" humans, it might be because of something that comes naturally to us, but not for them. The thing that comes immediately to mind is "randomness." And if they could find a way to harvest the random patterns of our brainwaves (or whatever), they might end up keeping us the way we keep bees-- in other words, in a way that lets humans continue to live as we ordinarily would, 'in the wild' so to speak, except for occasional interruptions.
no subject
Date: 2013-01-14 10:12 pm (UTC)5. (I'm sure you predicted my response but....) PERHAPS THEY'RE DOING THIS TO US ALREADY!!1!!
no subject
Date: 2013-01-14 10:29 pm (UTC)3. I think what bothers me about this (but I don't feel like I've put my finger on it, yet), is that it somehow sets poetry (and thus, by extension, poets -- namely me) outside the normal discourse of human society.
no subject
Date: 2013-01-14 10:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-15 12:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-15 07:26 pm (UTC)It doesn’t seem particularly sincere, most of the time, either. I get a blank look whenever I reply with an enthusiastic, “Oh, no, just keep writing and you’ll be fine. That’s how it works.” Like there isn’t really any motivation to write/do creative works, and the response was a rote expression of interest—like, “Oh, I tried that once, and I’ll mention that since you do it.”
no subject
Date: 2013-01-15 07:53 pm (UTC)Second: yes. It's also a bit depressing because these kind of conversations seem to run along on the belief that there's some magic pixie dust or something involved with creative endeavors, rather than work. And so the "I can't write (or even understand) poetry because I have not been sprinkled with the SPECIAL MAGIC like you have..."
And that a) puts me in a special category of humans, outside mainstream society, as I was telling