Is the post still up? I looked for it but couldn't find it.
I do like a mean-spirited chuckle at bad writing, but I feel like the subreddit has developed an extremely narrow idea of a well-written woman and condemns everything outside it.
If on a winters night a traveller absolutely needs to be in second person fiction discussions. Also a short story whose name I forgot about a drug that causes depersonalization and can permanently break identity.
Hi P H Lee! Congrats on your work. And on becoming the mpreg writer.
Sort of surprised that people with generally good taste like _The Steerswoman_. The protagonist makes an interesting villain: there's this psycho who goes around torturing people for answers to any question she gets idly curious about. But the book… doesn't seem aware that she's a villain. I'm supposed to root for her because, what, she's in the title? Also the prose is bland as hell.
I strongly recommend the movie _Shortbus_ (2006) for a story told mainly through sex, often about sex, but not one bit interested in whether the viewer finds it titillating or not.
> They didn’t tell it because it was bad. They weren’t dumb.
Aren't a lot of the stories pretty bad advice for real-life situations, though? Like it's dreaming about what if you could make your marriage not suck, not an actual plan for it.
The Jazzercise video is region-locked. US and UK should work.
> it becomes apparent that one of them murdered the other one’s wife that night
Hm, Lightning thinks Flash did it, but it seems to me that he's wrong: Flash's smile and nod and wink doesn't look sadistic, just enthusiastic; he looks like he's got no idea what's going on. Works as horror+comedy either way, of course.
> The artsy answer is that I don’t like immersion as an aesthetic goal.
What do you mean by "immersion" here? I'd have thought "engage with the story as if it mattered to them" was an immersion-y thing…?
A reader may react to "you do this", "you say that" with "no I don't! I wouldn't act this way in this circumstance!": what do you think of this? Missing the point of pretending you're someone else?
it turns out a downside of a transcribed oral interview is that i get details wrong about my favorite key and peele sketch (and also what year "captain america and the winter soldier" came out.) this is why i try to stick to print.
as far as i know there's only one torture scene in the steerswoman, in the first book, and it doesn't work. i don't think what rowan is doing is torture, in any context. (i don't particularly care to argue about this-- if you don't like the book, you don't like it! that's fine, and i'd be a fool to try to talk you out of it.)
immersion as expressed an aesthetic goal is a murky concept, but it often means getting "lost" in a book, completely forgetting that "you" and the real world exist. which is fine. it's just not what i'm going for (despite the fact that i keep writing in fields-- trpgs and sff-- where people assume it _has_ to be your main aesthetic goal. more fool me.) i would prefer for people to think about themselves while they're reading the story.
in short, that "no i don't!" is part of the goal for me. you don't! but why don't you? what if you did?
tbqh I think I have the same problem with you as with Brecht, where blud is like "Instead of building a set, I will draw 1 line on the ground to represent a house, so the audience never forgets that they're watching a play and it's not a real house" and I just instantly believe that yep this line is totally a real house.
it's all good! the last thing i want to do is tell a reader that they're reading a story wrong. please don't feel like you have to engage in a specific way. it's only that sometimes people complain about it and then i want to say "yup. i did that on purpose."
Lee's expert reader should write a history of Tumblr discourse. I would read it.
Oooo a new 90s feminist sf writer yess...
I read Suzy McKee Charnas in my early adolescence. This was...unwise. ;)
In what possible context were you on men writing women??
They objected to my description of boobs in a blog post. :(
Is the post still up? I looked for it but couldn't find it.
I do like a mean-spirited chuckle at bad writing, but I feel like the subreddit has developed an extremely narrow idea of a well-written woman and condemns everything outside it.
If on a winters night a traveller absolutely needs to be in second person fiction discussions. Also a short story whose name I forgot about a drug that causes depersonalization and can permanently break identity.
"Second Person, Present Tense" by Daryl Gregory ?https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/gregory_11_17_reprint/
Yes!
Hi P H Lee! Congrats on your work. And on becoming the mpreg writer.
Sort of surprised that people with generally good taste like _The Steerswoman_. The protagonist makes an interesting villain: there's this psycho who goes around torturing people for answers to any question she gets idly curious about. But the book… doesn't seem aware that she's a villain. I'm supposed to root for her because, what, she's in the title? Also the prose is bland as hell.
I strongly recommend the movie _Shortbus_ (2006) for a story told mainly through sex, often about sex, but not one bit interested in whether the viewer finds it titillating or not.
> They didn’t tell it because it was bad. They weren’t dumb.
Aren't a lot of the stories pretty bad advice for real-life situations, though? Like it's dreaming about what if you could make your marriage not suck, not an actual plan for it.
The Jazzercise video is region-locked. US and UK should work.
> it becomes apparent that one of them murdered the other one’s wife that night
Hm, Lightning thinks Flash did it, but it seems to me that he's wrong: Flash's smile and nod and wink doesn't look sadistic, just enthusiastic; he looks like he's got no idea what's going on. Works as horror+comedy either way, of course.
> The artsy answer is that I don’t like immersion as an aesthetic goal.
What do you mean by "immersion" here? I'd have thought "engage with the story as if it mattered to them" was an immersion-y thing…?
A reader may react to "you do this", "you say that" with "no I don't! I wouldn't act this way in this circumstance!": what do you think of this? Missing the point of pretending you're someone else?
it turns out a downside of a transcribed oral interview is that i get details wrong about my favorite key and peele sketch (and also what year "captain america and the winter soldier" came out.) this is why i try to stick to print.
as far as i know there's only one torture scene in the steerswoman, in the first book, and it doesn't work. i don't think what rowan is doing is torture, in any context. (i don't particularly care to argue about this-- if you don't like the book, you don't like it! that's fine, and i'd be a fool to try to talk you out of it.)
immersion as expressed an aesthetic goal is a murky concept, but it often means getting "lost" in a book, completely forgetting that "you" and the real world exist. which is fine. it's just not what i'm going for (despite the fact that i keep writing in fields-- trpgs and sff-- where people assume it _has_ to be your main aesthetic goal. more fool me.) i would prefer for people to think about themselves while they're reading the story.
in short, that "no i don't!" is part of the goal for me. you don't! but why don't you? what if you did?
tbqh I think I have the same problem with you as with Brecht, where blud is like "Instead of building a set, I will draw 1 line on the ground to represent a house, so the audience never forgets that they're watching a play and it's not a real house" and I just instantly believe that yep this line is totally a real house.
it's all good! the last thing i want to do is tell a reader that they're reading a story wrong. please don't feel like you have to engage in a specific way. it's only that sometimes people complain about it and then i want to say "yup. i did that on purpose."