I think my usual Youtubers must have all got a memo to make content this week because my list seems very full.
When my Wife recommends books to her friends
This week: The challenge of influence (and avoiding it), DEATH, Chemistry (character), Heroic Sacrifice and Trolley Problems, and giving classics 1 star reviews
Ignoring the Rings of Power clickbait – this is a surprisingly Deep Dive into whether work is derivative or not. Its quite a long form piece so I will leave it to speak for itself but its funny to see JustWrite bounce between fancy literature and explanation and getting frustrated at Wheel of Time.
On the subject of Sci-Fi/Fantasy all needing to be balls-deep in politics, it reminds me a bit of how most of the Fantasy Tropes that have been taken and/or amplified from Tolkien are things like Elves, Orcs, epic battles and just world building in general, NOT the various powerful themes of Lord of the Rings. Game of Thrones heavily featuring politics has gone and inspired a lot of screenwriting, and yet its not necessarily that great a fiction trope and while it may be something that stands out about GoT it doesn’t mean its necessarily a powerful trope to imitate.
Really interesting one – what stands out to me is that character deaths should have an element of ‘twist’ to them. E.g. playing against a setup or an expectation. Not saying a death must be a surprise but that like Chekov’s Gun it needs to have meaning setup from earlier in the story.
Love this video because its dealing with such a wanted, but hard to pin down topic
If you follow Trope talk you might have seen them say before that what constitutes ‘hero’ is kinda vague – but this video makes it a lot less vague. Also as the video goes on brings up the Trolley Problem so of course I’m going to enjoy it. (also examines Superman’s boy-scout act which I also enjoy deep diving)
Ok I’m mostly sold on this video for the host saying “I used to have thoughts now I just have a graveyard of memes rattling around in my skull”
Major Spoilers for Seasons 1 & 2: (did you know Sauron was the bad guy???)
So in a brief moment of wisdom, I thought I better look back on my review of Season 1, and omg my blog writing was crap. There is nothing like going back to something a year or two later and realizing your stream-of-consciousness is more of a ‘broken sprinkler’ of half-baked thoughts
Ergo, in the interests of continuity a brief recap on Season 1.
The show is, of course, intended to be a telling of Sauron’s creation of the Rings of Power, however the first season suffers through having very little of either. Well technically Sauron is ever-present after pretending to be Halbrand for the majority of the season, but imho the show suffered from slow pacing and a lot of what I would call back-and-forth or “will-they-won’t-they” story telling. By which I mean there was a lot of characters stating and restating their positions – Elrond seemed to travel back and forth with the Dwarves to repeat the same pleas, while Durin and Durin argued about the same things. Almost all ‘The Strangers’ plot points seemed to be him trying to use magic and causing harm, then not causing harm, then causing harm again.
The majority of the good plot points in Season 1 happened in the finale – and coupled with some very weird directorial decisions – I didn’t really enjoy Season 1 that much. However strangely I had a strong sense of potential. I think it was because there were some interesting setups and also issues of pacing are something that can be ‘fixed.’
So how did Season 2 go?
Personally I really liked it. It genuinely felt like the show-runners had taken some criticism, the pacing was a LOT faster, the stakes were more character driven and we didn’t dwell too long on points.
The villains really stole the show in this season: Adar as the corrupted elf-father of the Uruks and Sauron/Annatar as the manipulator and forger of the rings:
Adar is probably the best character of the series (and one of the only show original characters too) His main motivation in Season 2 is to find and kill Sauron, and is willing to slaughter any number of elves who stand in his way. His character is intriguing in this show because he shows genuine concern for his Orc children, however is also dead set on eliminating Sauron (which Ironically brings about his own failure)
Sauron’s main thread of this season is showing his true manipulative talents, gaslighting and controlling Celebrimbor to make the 7 Dwarven rings and 9 for Men (doomed to die). The writers have taken a cult leader/abusive archetype inspiration for Sauron’s character and its fascinating to watch him blame the poor elf for his own torture as Sauron’s manipulations become increasing overt.
Season 2 isn’t perfect – The Stranger (Gandalf)’s origin story starts apparently strong, meeting Tom Bombadil, and introducing a mystery Dark Wizard – however kind of fizzles out as nothing particularly major occurs. The Numenor sequence has an interesting homage to Game of Thrones (to be honest when the scene happened I scoffed a bit and then realized that Game of Thrones came out around 13 years ago so taking strong inspiration probably isn’t considered too plagiarism)
But perhaps isn’t the strongest sequence, its reasonably dramatic but is far removed from other events and is a fairly ‘straight line’ plot – its about the corruption of the nation and each scene is just pretty much a further step in that downfall.
There are still a few kinda almost slapstick level hilarious moments in this show. One in the first episode when Sauron turns into a wormy blob monster, he’s kinda flopping around the environment looking for a person to absorb/eat and for a few moments it just seems a bit like a dialogue-less Pixar short, his floppy worm body just looking so defeated.
Another darker one is there is supposed to a dramatic ‘take the shot’ moment where an unnamed elf is about to snipe an Orc War Machine but gets abruptly pin-cushioned, its not as bad as:
but it sort of evokes an almost comedic tone for a moment that is supposed to be dramatic.
Vibe-Check
So while I really enjoyed Season 2 it seemed like there is a fairly concentrated effort to criticize and undermine the show. In my honest opinion I think its really just being targeted by bigots as part of their “anti-woke” agenda – but trying to claim they are defending the ‘canon’ 😒 Online discourse hasn’t been great for a while but I think the days of jumping online to see what everyone else things of a show or movie (and finding that enjoyable) are long gone.
And that stance hasn’t softened after recently learning that A.I. technology is hogging incredible amounts of power (so between Crypto, NFTs, and A.I. could we please just take a break??) but I recently read How to Stand up to a Dictator and came to a somewhat conspiratorial perspective – which I desperately hope doesn’t come to anything, but hear me out because… Yikes!
Social Media – a quick primer
I highly doubt anyone whose eyes find this blog are unaware of some of the horrors of social media. Between Russian Bot farming, algo-rhythmic purgatory, and watching our own friends and family fall for misinformation things look pretty bleak.
But here is the thing – it seems the majority view is a presumption of innocence towards the stewards of our biggest medias (well anyone look at twitter recently?). Android jokes aside, Mark Zuckerburg is typically assumed to be driven by organisational goals not world domination per se…
(complete side note I just had one of those brain farts where I COULD NOT for the life of me remember Mark Zuckerburg’s name, co-incidence?!?)
… and Google (was) perceived as being fairly benevolent.
But its kind of staring us in the face how influential social media really is. The documentary The Social Dilemma lays out the claim that social media company’s goals are to drive traffic and maintain users, ostensibly for bragging rights and monies.
However I’ve become cynical to this. Don’t get me wrong, of course money is a big motivation, but consider this fact: A.I. isn’t making any money WTF then is almost every app/program/screen “supported” by A.I. now??
Let me “just ask the question” what would be an incredibly powerful way to exert influence in a world drenched in A.I. use and abuse?
Now perhaps I am being a little alarmist here, but consider this: do you think that companies that have allowed scraping all our data, promoting misinformation and promoting conflict have ethical intentions with A.I. ?
Of course its a complete outrage that writers artists musicians and who knows what other creatives are getting their work butchered and repurposed for little effort and that’s pretty damn disgusting in the first place but… BUT even worse in my head is consider the potential influence of those who control the code in the first place.
We already know that A.I. has massive biases made worse by the fact that its decision making is obscure, so how are we supposed to trust Social Media giants to not abuse this power? Kids are using Chat GPT to write their homework, what happens if there is a mild Conservative bias to History speeches? Or much much more likely pro A.I. and pro engagement strategies (since we already have evidence of this from Social Media giants)
Even this site has an A.I. you can use to tweak your work.
For a small relief counterpoint – Social Media companies are not the sole purveyors of A.I. technology, and in part the absolute saturation of A.I. everywhere appears to come from many companies and a bit of a bandwagon effect.
But I don’t want to be naive. It’s easy to be a bit complacent depending where you live in the world, but there is a right-wing authoritarian swing globally that is been highly enabled by Social Media and misinformation. It’s already a nightmare to think all our Art(content) consumption is produced by scalping machines, but the nightmare gets layers when you think the potential social influence said products could produce.
41 books – Two and a Half years (5th June 2021 – 3rd March 2024) LFG
It’s rather strange to me that I prevaricated on this post for almost 6 months (edit add two months to that). Honestly as I worked through the books I expected my response, post Sheppard’s Crown, would be to rush this post almost straight away. I suspect in an odd way the amount of reflection I included throughout my read-though actually left me not as much so say now (don’t worry I’ll still go on a bit).
For anyone who hasn’t been following my posts, back in 2021 I decided to do a Discworld readthrough. Funnily enough I can’t 100% recall why I decided on this, possibly I’d seen a lot of online ‘chatter’ about Discworld – but now as I think about it, it may have been exposure to the ‘interesting’ TV adaptation The Watch that truly sparked the reading.
So without actually thinking quite how much material 41 books is I embarked on a systematic journey through Discworld. Some had advised me to read through each ‘series’ (e.g. the Guards) separately, but I really wanted to go from whoa-to-go from publishing date which I don’t regret. There were quite a few of the last books that I hadn’t read – and some from throughout that I hadn’t reread for ages so it was a mix of new and old over this journey.
I don’t really have a good formal way to organize this post so I’m just going to reflect on different elements till it seems complete….
My Emotional Reaction
Overall I found it quite sad rereading these books and often found my mind wandering to what-ifs (e.g. what if Sir Terry never got Alzheimer’s) which then led to another weirdly calm moment of when I finally closed the book on Shepard’s Crown. I expected to feel a bit lost, to mourn the series and the author – but I have to be honest I felt pretty ‘closured’ about the series (this is a bit odd for me because I do often spend a day or two in mourning after series end, even in cases where the author/creator isn’t deceased, e.g. after Logan I was really unhappy 😦 )
So I guess my feelings on Sir Terry and the series are somewhat bittersweet. It’s hard to look past so many excellent publications and fandom and not see a successful life I suppose. I have to admit prior to more recent times I didn’t realize quite how popular and successful Pratchett was. Don’t get me wrong, I knew he was a very successful author, but I thought he was a little niche / cult-following but Pratchett (possibly being knighted might have been a giveaway) is ridiculously successful, multiple award winning, has honorary doctorates, the lot.
It would have been amazing to see Pratchett’s last few books not impacted by his ’embuggerance’ and also where future books would go, at the same time I feel very blessed to have what we have. I read a lot of Pratchett books at a young age and they were beyond formative, not just in my own writing but as a person.
The Embuggerance
Like many, I found it hard to read later books of Pratchett’s and not scan for signs of dementia. Interesting in reading other’s responses some find this morbid, while others have actually created studies and analysis (not just of Pratchett, other authors experiencing some form of decline). I found (somewhat similar to my conclusions on On Monsters) that I couldn’t actually ignore the creeping perspective. Even if I didn’t really mean to, I found myself looking at and wondering about the impact on different works.
What really struck me about Pratchett’s work is that according to Wilkin’s (his biographer) not only was Pratchett prolific he also kept large amounts of work in ‘The Pit’ to pull out and rework as needed and publishing order was not necessarily written order. So in observing the later books, its not like each one shows more and more signs of Alzheimer’s, its more notable in two or three of the books that things have changed a little. (in my opinion Snuff, and Raising Steam). Snuff is notable that Vimes’ character is a bit ‘off’ for want of a better word. He behaves a lot like Jack Bauer from 24 (am I showing my age?) where he threatens and is violent towards many of the characters in his ‘investigation’ and lacking Vimes’ typical subtlety (sarcastic indirectness is probably more accurate). There are also multiple jokes that seem a little low-brow and not fitting with the story (Pratchett’s jokes are usually either/and very punny or referential).
Catching Steam isn’t bad bad but it does have a strange winding plot that just don’t click – its still a fun read and I think part of why I felt a bit of closure reading is there is sense of ‘last hurrah’ I don’t think Pratchett intentionally wrote endings as a general rule (more on that later) but my understanding is that he intended to keep writing for as long as possible but definitely Raising Steam has a feeling about it, an obviously Sheppard’s Crown is a closing book.
Even though I found it difficult to ignore the embuggarance, I still found Pratchett’s determination and drive very very inspiring – to keep producing and creating his whole life, again makes me feel quite blessed to have these books to experience – many of us would have just curled up and/or spent our hard earned royalties on a few luxuries etc.
The Largest ‘Universe’
Another ‘realization’ in an era of obsession over shared universes (although I see this quickly coming to an end) it only sort of clicked for me recently that the Discworld is one of the largest ongoing shared universes in fiction. Pratchett’s approach to this really fascinates me, as my understanding is that he wasn’t really a continuity fiend – in fact my observation is that Pratchett is quite talented at making whatever he was working on at that time seem coherent within the universe and even the character’s backstory, however on closer inspection there is a fair amount of retconning or more accurately backstory-as-needed for that particular tale. For example Vimes having an ancestor ‘Stoneface’ (who killed the last king of Ankh-Morpork) was really inserted in Feet of Clay, but felt like that information had been there all along.
Similarly, Pratchett really didn’t mind dropping a plot-line he wasn’t keen on. Probably the biggest shocker rereading in detail is Carrot. Carrot is a central character in the early Guards books and one of the themes I really enjoyed was how Vimes and Carrot rubbed off on each other in a positive way. I’m not sure if Pratchett ever spoke of why Carrot dropped off the story – his last outing of significance is actually The Last Hero, which is more of short story and his last plotline in a Guard’s novel is Last Elephant. He barely features in Night Watch, and if I recall correctly in Thud! he features in small doses early in the book but despite it being a Dwarven focused book isn’t involved much (I also though he should have been in Raising Steam for the same reason but w/e).
Speculation is that Pratchett didn’t actually have anywhere to take the character, it appears he enjoyed subverting expectations about his Kinglyness but perhaps found it too close to a fantasy trope to develop his story any further. The bit that I annoys me a little is that we never quite seen Carrot and Angua work it out exactly – but as I mentioned throughout my reviews Pratchett is a little odd on relationships. At least in my observation his earlier books have a lot of unobtainable not quite going to happen relationships, e.g. Rincewind, Teppic, William de Worde, Tiffany Aching. However I note more towards the last books we actually get people ‘together’ Moist – even the Patrician!
Coming back to the Universe aspect, Pratchett seemed to have a good sense for what needed to be consistent and what didn’t. I’m sure if you truly tracked the magic and mechanics of Discworld you’d find a mess of time-travel, magical mayhem and a surprising number of mystery continents. But the books never felt inconsistent or out of sync. The stories were always complete in themselves – and my feeling is that Pratchett was not a fan of cheesy cameos or team-ups (the closest is probably the ensemble on the Steam Train in Raising Steam) – yet he seemed to naturally cross populate the books with different characters. Almost always these were minor characters – with the exception of a couple: both William de Worde and Moist interact with Vimes (and neither like him much) and the Wizards tended to be the cross-story characters.
I think what ultimately made Discworld tick was the nature of people, often eccentric, morally gray at times – even though the stories could vary from relatively grounded (Mostrous Regimen) to very magically wacky (The Last Continent) there was always a sense that you were on the Discworld.
Some thoughts on some of the sub-series
Rincewind
Definitely one my favourite OG characters, well I guess THE OG character. Rincewind is the MC of 6 novels, but also features heavily in The Last Hero, and has the odd bit part in other novels. Something that I’m going to reference many times in this section is whether or not Pratchett gave his characters endings. Most of the story arcs in the Discworld are left very open, again like many elements of Pratchett’s writing I’m not sure of the intent, however my gut feeling is that he liked to keep things open, and was very very success at doing so. However this does mean that many characters have a bit of a ? next to their story…
Rincewind however I feel had resolution. After many novels of running like hell (one of my favourite Pratchett puns is where Rincewind admits to being ‘racist’ e.g. being good at 100 metre races, 1000 metre races etc). Rincewind eventually settles down at the Unseen University and appears to live a desire boring life there.
As a painfully shy and continuing to be a very conflict avoidant-adult I’ve always found Rincewind a relatable character, its quite interesting to me how Pratchett has been able to pull off a ‘cowardly’ character while still be relatively typically heroic. In my recent readthrough I’ve come to a weird head-cannon where Rincewind is actually from ’roundworld’ hence the reason he’s so freaked out by everything in the Discworld – but actually presents as quite intelligent and sensible in many ways. Although for a more series analysis Rincewind I think has represented Pratchett’s railing against the absurdities of the world, against which the only sane response is to flee in horror (and poking fun at fantasy tropes).
Death/Susan
All the characters from Discworld are pretty iconic, but perhaps the most iconic of the icons is Death. I’m pretty sure he is the only character that appears in all Discworld novels and almost always features alongside the deepest emotional storylines. Death has 5 novels to his name, and they are interesting in how different they are to each other, my sense is that Pratchett found the Mort as apprentice learning about Death too on the nose and obvious, and preferred to create very strange adventures for Death themselves instead.
Interestingly talking about character arcs, Susan features in 3 of the books and kinda takes of as MC, and counter to my comments earlier, she kinda gets an implied happy ending, hooking up with the personification of time. Strangely though Death as a character kinda gets dropped/ish the initial Death books focus on the impossibility of Death developing as a character and what this means for him and universe, and it doesn’t stop exactly but kinda just settles in Thief of Time, its essentially just well established that our Death is superior to the ideas of the soulless Auditors and that’s it.
That all said I’m not quite sure what more Death books would really bring, I think Pratchett was much more enthused about the human foibles of Vimes and Moist to explore his ideas.
The Witches
The Witches are quite hard to write about as they provide some of the most dynamic stories of the Discworld, talking through all the key points of their adventures would practically require summarizing the books themselves. A major theme of the Witches really seems to be about human evil, but both explored externally but also internally by Granny Weatherwax. When Tiffany is introduced there is (IMHO) quite a steep turn towards the darker themes.
Major Spoilers (geeze what are you doing reading THIS post if you don’t want spoilers)
Granny Weatherwax is one of the few MCs that Pratchett writes who actually dies and has a sendoff. and its quite heartbreaking. I actually don’t have any deep analysis on this – I just wanted to say it!
Vimes and the City-Watch
Vimes and the City Watch is probably the most beloved series of the Disc. Now technically The Witches have the most books in their series – but they are much more clearly delineated between Granny W and Tiffany Aching books. All eight of the Watch books are centered (mostly) on Vimes – the character that Pratchett himself most related to (although he admitted to perhaps being more likely a Rincewind).
The Watch series has a LOT of strengths – I think having the most social commentary, usually through Dwarven and Troll race relations but also touching on politics in general, arms-races, ‘Jingoism’ and so forth. The Watch series also IMHO also contains some of the most badass story lines, Feet of Clay and Fifth Elephant being my favourites.
Moist
I would have already mentioned in my reviews that the Moist books were not originally my favorites, but on reread I have come to appreciate the character a little more. He’s certainly a bit of a departure from the earlier books – a sort of roguish moral(?) conman who seems almost the opposite of the stoic Vimes. On my reread I got the impression that Pratchett was developing new reflections on politics and leadership and society. Through Vimes I always got the impression that Pratchett did not hold much respect for those in positions of power, however by the time Moist is on the scene there is a change in this sense – the Patrician presents as borderline ethical, and through Moist we get a sort of perspective of how just maybe someone can possess power without being (totally) morally bankrupt.
Conclusion
To conclude I think there are powerful lessons from Pratchett that stories don’t have to be perfectly polished or have good continuity to have an impact. Heart and soul, and quirkiness are just as important at tying up all the lose threads and not disappointing an editor.
I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my Pratchett readthrough and do recommend a deep dive if you haven’t already. While there are a lot of books they are for the most part fast paced and ‘easy’ (not boring) to read. Plus there is a lot of online community deciphering and discovering puns (if that’s your thing).
I always have very nice things to say about any book which makes me laugh out loud – and The Damsel did this. There is just something wonderful about the analogies and inner commentary of our MC. Even though some of the prose I was like ‘ha ha what does even mean feeling like grated cheese?’ there was always a certain vibe captured and it was never a negative feeling.
The story is quite well constructed, a depowered individual among superheroes may not be completely unique, however I felt the way this world was constructed was very original. I liked the way society is constructed around The Damsel (well when I say ‘liked’ I mean I like how it was written the world is borderline dystopia) and the objectification of the role has a scary message underneath the superhero antics.
Couple of cautions – this is a long and action-packed story, there is a TONNE going on, which if its your thing will be all the better, but there are some twists and turns on the way which made me go ‘ok we’re doing this now?’ again not critiques more just trying to match story to reader effectively!
Thank you Emma for a review copy of The Damsel – its a goodie.
Feeling a little under the weather today (both meanings my city is in a state of emergency re: flooding and I have a cold) so just posting without much commentary (and a few memes)
So this post is largely inspired by hearing this excellent term ‘Outrage Tourism’ and I’m going to get a little political with it – so I’m quite happy to take feedback and alternative takes. In any case today we’ll be talking about toxic fandoms, clout chasing, and bigotry ‘yay’
Difficult fandoms are by no means a new thing it’s fairly well established that Arthur Conan Doyle resented his most famous creation Sherlock Holmes even to the point of killing the character, and bringing them back (which other than being quite famous in itself perhaps creating or at least strongly popularized the trope of fake-out deaths).
However I suspect I’m not alone in noting that things are a little different today. Like many (almost all) areas of our life are we are affected by technology and infrastructure that allows instant communication, online organisation and a kind of race-to-the-bottom of empowerment, by which I mean one of the most empowering things you can do to enhance your online clout – is to ditch all semblance of ethics, to use A.I. / bots / engage in bad faith behaviour etc etc.
Outrage as a Feature
Which brings me to the topic of todays post. Since this phrase appears to be new on the scene I feel I can get away with putting a lot of my own spin on it. IMHO Outrage Tourism refers to a sort of media consumption in which the emotional criticism is the intended purpose – not the authentic critique of a piece.
Now I think there are some subtle lines in the sand to be drawn here. The genre of “Angry Gamer” is absolutely nothing new, its been a relatively consistent style of Youtube reviewers for a long time, and snarky or overtly negative reviewing in general is a pretty popular approach. I myself even started posting book reviews online, inspired by the Snark of Zero Punctuation. These tropes i wouldn’t necessarily call Outrage Tourism however the genre definition enables what I’m about to talk about and can stumble too far if the creators are not careful (and/or decide they want to).
The line for me is that ‘Outrage’ is a claim that not just something is bad – but that the error or badness is in fact a violation, a betrayal, an ATTACK on the consumers of this piece of work. its a statement of HOW DARE THIS SUCK, as opposed to ‘wow that sucked.’
Genuine outrage stems from entitlement, which is a step beyond expectation. Entitlement is the perception that you are owed the thing, and therefore got getting it, is more than disappointment its an outright attack on you.
There are situations where I believe outrage is at least somewhat justified, long running series that endings are ‘phoned-in’ however I believe discourse has gone many, many steps further.
But Why tho?
So what I’m really getting at is there appears to be a concentrated effort from some groups and some people, to actually be outraged on purpose. This might seem pretty ridiculous on first brush (except lets be honest I’m sure you’ve all either had or have people in your lives who are just straight up angry all the time…) however there are multiple reasons I believe that this occures ranging from the mercantile to the alarming.
Toxic Fandoms
Again this isn’t much of a new concept and has been bubbling away for a while. Also the various ways that fans can be toxic extends beyond ‘outrage tourism’ however I want to focus on the feature where fans begin seeking outrage rather than simply being infuriated for real.
Firstly it may be worth exploring the nature of human beings when they form groups, I won’t go full textbook, but its notable than when people get together there are some really notable and interesting ‘group behaviours’ for example people’s status within and without the group can become important to them. I keep coming back to Rick and Morty a show that while not unique, is kind of held up as a seminal example of acquiring a toxic fandom. Of course this was for one of the most cringiest reasons imaginable, Rick is written in universe as being so (technologically) intelligent that he’s basically a God and yep, for many fans this somehow meant that they must be smart too?!?
“To be fair you need a high IQ to understand Ricky and Morty” has become so memed that I cannot even find the originals.
To laser focus on Outrage Tourism, this is where human nature and fandom come together to create a monster. Again you might at first brush assume that a fandom would be overtly positive, however there is a strange contradiction in these scenarios. My take is that once a community gets large enough, it becomes more effective and powerful to be destructive and negative than to actually appreciate the product. This creates a perverse incentive – to authentically assess and analysis the subject, or to START your perspective from one of Outrage, because that will already hit the ground running for status within your group.
Couple that with the fact that gathering can create a sense of entitlement too. Just to be clear I’m not 100% against the interactional nature of art in modern times. I don’t think the perspective that fans should just shut up and have zero expectations of what they consume is correct, however gathering and organizing can create a sense of a warped democracy, where a show/book/movie/music can be criticized simply for not being what the fans wanted. Which on the surface is a fairly weak comment, however can be bolstered by those enjoying Outrage.
Clout Chasers
In a similar vein, there probably isn’t a more annoying effect of social media than ‘clout chasing.’ For anyone wondering wtf I’m talking about, this is a conundrum of producing media material of whether you kowtow to market trends and ‘hot topics’ or just produce material authentically. For example if you are producing reviews or commentary on media, it does make reasonable sense to keep your eye on what people are talking about, what is popular and so forth. Overall this topic could warrant a post in itself, but lets skip to the ‘Outrage’ part. Similar to the fandom argument – producing Outrage is a powerful technique on social media. Even if what people want and need is balanced perspectives, its well established that angst and anger draws more clicks and responses than thumbs up and general likes.
I would just like to take a moment to point out that this isn’t necessarily an immutable element of human nature versus social media. Social Media giants at any moment could decide to change their systems to promote balanced views but they don’t…
So I don’t think anyone would fault reviewers or commentators for seeking out popular subjects, its kind of contrary to think they wouldn’t. However Outrage is sitting there like a Faustian Devil just begging ‘influencers’ and the like to try it out and get the fame they deserve.
Bigotry
This part of my post is perhaps getting more ‘political’ than usual, but I feel is important to consider (and combat) if my concerns are correct. It’s well established now that social media has become a platform where bigots ‘alt-right’ and other hateful ideologies have been able to manipulate and get a foothold back into public conciseness. Misinformation, offensive material and harassment have become commonplace and I think anyone considering this topic right now who thinks that these trends have come about naturally and not through considered and concentrated needs to pay more attention.
Where does Outrage Tourism fall into this topic?
Well put it this way. Have you noticed a really (fucking annoying) trend of people throwing the word “Woke” around? No-where has this been quite as prominent as in recent movies and screenplays, where you can barely look for the details of a popular franchise without seeking some sort of ‘pick-me’ headline about how Wokeness is ruining things.
Of course I’m 100% in support of things being more Woke, however this topic has a dangerous subtlety. It would be easy to fall into a false simplicity that there are simply a fairly large group of bigots who don’t like to see the whole range of human beings that exist within their precious TV shows, however is always important to remember that the isms and phobias are not reactive and a piece of a puzzle of concentrated effort to increase power and influence.
Bigotry isn’t just about specific hatred towards one group – its about being hateful in general. If you think that all the BS spouting anti-woke youtube videos will go away if Amazon decides to only cast white actors as elves in Lord of the Rings than I believe you are mistaken. Outrage is the language of toxicity, if you study abusive relationships, cults, workplace bullying you’ll see how the most evil people know how to play the victim, to use Outrage as a method of gaining power and clout – and then course being generally evil.
So what am I actually saying here – I realize this might be a controversial assumption, however I genuinely believe that there is a concentrated effort by bad-actors (as in bad faith not people in shows who are bad at acting LOL) to increase their clout, influence AND generally create a sense of ‘ruin.’ It’s not about any particular fault, its about finding large and popular mediums and creating a sense of entitled victimhood to seek outrage. If they can get away with calling something ‘Woke’ they will, but even if they can’t pull that off they can always just find some other problem ‘not true to Tolkien’s lore’ and still generate a sense of malaise that fosters resentment.
Manufactured Outrage is nothing new – however the way its pervading media and social media is particularly Pernicious. People are less likely to think as deeply about a ranty youtube video as a political rally – however there is no reason to think that people who are willing to programme hundreds of Twitter bots, spread misinformation and lie to people faces aren’t going to try and promote fascism through media discourse?
In deciding my purpose of this blog in general – I’d thought roughly that I wasn’t going to ‘go there’, however I’m starting to realize the extent of the problems we are facing right now (plus what have I got to lose, no offence current followers but I’m not exactly swimming in popularity just talking about writing) and I want to be part of the solution and oppose hate however it comes.
In covering Outrage Tourism – there are plenty of reasons for it, but I wouldn’t say many healthy ones. Just to be clear in conclusion – I’m partial to a rage-watch myself and this post isn’t about being non-critical but rather against selecting Outrage in the first instance and going from there.
Really keen to hear others thoughts on this – opposing and in support.
Today: Why your characters Suck, Dreams, and Endings
One reason I think I keep coming back to McNulty’s videos (other than Youtube’s algorithms) is that he tends to just slap some of these issues head-on! And there is something strangely mercantile about writing – his first point that a character has a bad ‘intro’ sounds almost unartistic “shouldn’t authenticity reign? Isn’t it kinda contrived” but there is this weird juxtaposition in writing between the overt context and subtext.
That all said are we really going to bring up Titanic and the infamous door? Admittedly I’ve only ever watched Titanic all of one times but IMHO its OK sometimes to accept a rule or barrier given by a story?
😅I have a slightly different take on dreams as inspiration for writing… I mean in some respects what could be more inspiring than pure psychic fantasy, my problem is though the gap between the ability to ‘word good’ the material of dreams is if anything harder than getting my daydreaming imagination into words!!
I feel like I haven’t been too diligent getting points 1-9 in a nice tidy order! My main things about the 3rd act is that often if your story is great up to this point it will (almost) be good no matter what. Not saying endings don’t matter but more that everything leading up to them is what makes them good/bad. Often an ending is more about setting a tone or theme to ‘cap off’ your story.
If you’re a Sci-Fi ‘concept person’ then this is the book for you. Not concept as in “I have the concept of a plan”, but if you love crazy, off-the-wall and original thinking then this it the sort of short story collection you’ll want to get amongst.
While highly variable in tone, there is a consistent thread of bleakness in these stories, the very first one perhaps the most heartbreaking. Najberg runs through topics like nuclear war, self-immolation, mental health and what if human beings shed their skin? It’s a good read but at times heavy.
My only potential beef is that there is perhaps quantity over quality, I would have sorely liked to stay with some of the better stories and perhaps had some more distinctive progression, even at the cost of not getting every story in this tome. Nonetheless its a good deep dive if the above sounds like it suits you!
Lonely Power Poles 