109 KiB
[D] Outsider Viewpoint: Why 'Rational Fiction' is inherently problematic
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Author: u/None *
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URL: https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/why-rational-fiction-is-inherently-problematic.34730/
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Score: 45
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Created: 2016-12-23T05:08:03
Post:
Comments:
u/DaystarEld [+110] Pokémon Professor (34 minutes later)
walks into thread and looks around curiously
Funny, I thought characters in Rational Fiction had one of precisely two motivations: Beautiful Pure Logic and foolish, pathetic emotions.
Hmmm...
Ironically enough, most "rationalist" fans are themselves thoroughly attached to magical thinking.
kneels down and examines the straw littering the floor in gorey patterns
"Yes, it appears he's struck again, inspector. You may want to keep your men back."
an officer of the law chooses that moment to step around the corner, and after a gasp, covers his mouth and turns away, retching. The Inspector General is pale, but resolved
"You think it's him, then?"
lights a pipe, careful not to let any ash fall on the dry combustible material
"I'm afraid so. It's like a scarecrow's idea of a slasher film in here. Only The Strawman Ripper would be so messy in his strikes. At least he makes it easy for us to recognize his work."
u/callmebrotherg [+38] now posting as /u/callmesalticidae (2 hours later)
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to make The Strawman Ripper into a full story. Bonus points if it teaches good debate skills in the process.
u/DaystarEld [+25] Pokémon Professor (2 hours later)
Uuuuuuuuuuuughhhhhh not yet another project, right before the holidays!
I'll put it on The List. Fair warning: it's probably going to gather dust for awhile unless lightning strikes :P
Anyone here has my blessing to take the idea and run with it.
u/callmebrotherg [+7] now posting as /u/callmesalticidae (2 hours later)
Best case scenario, it becomes a sort of common project that anybody can add stories to, and eventually we'll have enough good ones that we can make a reading canon (though probably not a continuity canon) out of them.
/gets ideas
u/dalr3th1n [+3] (22 hours later)
We could post it to /r/writingprompts. It'd probably get some decent responses, if not quite as strong a rationalist bent as we go for here.
u/eaglejarl [+14] (53 minutes later)
You get all the win for posting that in the thread and then following it up with such a reasonable response.
u/DaystarEld [+8] Pokémon Professor (56 minutes later)
I made an account on the site just to do so. I'm bored while doing some sound-editing, and am happy to duke it out with these guys a bit to relieve some :P
u/eaglejarl [+5] (an hour later)
Well, as long as you're there, come join the fun at Marked For Death.
u/DaystarEld [+5] Pokémon Professor (an hour later)
I'm actually still waiting to finish Naruto (I'm like 1/3 of the way through the manga) and have held off on any fanfic of it to avoid potential spoilers. I'm definitely planning on reading through Marked when I finish Naruto, though :)
u/eaglejarl [+5] (an hour later)
Totally valid, although I will comment that we've changed things so much that I doubt you would get any spoilers.
u/Solonarv [+4] Chaos Legion (4 hours later)
There may not be spoilers in the story itself, but the in-thread discussion may contain them.
u/Gworn [+3] (10 hours later)
1/3 to 1/2 the way through the manga is actually where it's fine to stop and still understand 95% of Naruto fanfics.
u/Cariyaga [+2] Kyubey did nothing wrong (19 hours later)
Ooh, looking forward to having you!
u/scruiser [+13] CYOA (a day later)
Maybe that was high-handed of you... but literally the OP starts by defining rational fiction in the most insulting way possible (and such that only a caricature of HPMOR fits his definition), and then various posters continue with either claiming that rational fictional=good fiction (despite numerous counter examples of good fiction that is not 'rational') or lumping all rationalist fiction in with the worst traits of HPMOR or any number of misunderstandings that show they have only read 1 or 2 rationalist stories and not bothered reading the subreddit of tvTropes page at all.
So the thread was probably going to be shitshow regardless.
Edit* expanding on my post because I thought of more points to rage about... Earthscorpion shows up to tone police, not the numerous other insults such as calling rational fanfic fans EY cultists, but rather Daystarelds' post calling them out. People trying to get the thread "back on topic" by returning to the OP even though OP was poorly thought out and/or outright trolling, also ignoring what little advancement the discussion has had from OP. The LotR being brought up 3 separate times, with the discussion repeating itself down the same way. People asking why JJBA isn't rational in order to call /r/rational too general... like wtf, in JJBA new applications of powers and powers themselves are randomly invented every couple of fights, the fights often consist of absurd guesses and predictions of opponents actions... trying to call it rational to prove that rational fix definition is too general seems especially disingenuous to me (for the record, I found the dozen or so episodes I watched to be fun, but too repetitive for me to watch the whole series).
So I think your mistake was trying to fairly engage with them at all.
u/DaystarEld [+6] Pokémon Professor (a day later)
I probably got a bit carried away there, but I hope my posts at least showed some people that they were being grossly unfair and unproductive.
If not and I just succeeded in coming off like an asshole... Whelp, mea culpa. Hopefully I learn from the experience and do better next time.
u/scruiser [+8] CYOA (a day later)
So I binged through the rest of the thread... it looks like eventually the discussion actually shifted in a somewhat more productive direction of discussion the definition of "rational" "rationalist" in a manner that at least got the two sides talking to each other. Ironically, you jumping back in with responses to older comments dragged the discussion back down some. Of course, given the overall crappiness of the original post, and the regular repetition of points already addressed, its not like anything of value was lost.
Hopefully I learn from the experience and do better next time.
I think you've already done better than EY's worst case of every "critic is a sneer troll", so there's that. In the case of this thread, I think the best case would probably have just been to respond to the few legitimate points, explain why the "accidentally" insulting comments were insulting (example: many people empathize with characters like HJPEV and actually talked like him as a kid, so calling him an inhuman mindless robot is insulting to these people), and outright ignore the directly insulting comments (i.e. /r/rational is a cult, this comment is not even worth trying to address).
u/DaystarEld [+7] Pokémon Professor (a day later)
Ironically, you jumping back in with responses to older comments dragged the discussion back down some.
Yeah, in future situations, upon returning to a thread after being away a bit, I'm definitely going to read through to the present part of a thread before I start responding to the people who responded to me, so as not to shift the tone back if it's moved on.
and outright ignore the directly insulting comments (i.e. /r/rational is a cult, this comment is not even worth trying to address).
I disagree with this. There are people who legitimately don't know what the community is or have never heard of places like LessWrong. I think it's worth pushing back against accusations of being a cult. I could be wrong though.
u/scruiser [+5] CYOA (a day later)
Just made it to the end of the thread... ironically it was locked a few pages after the discussion had turned mostly civil.
I disagree with this. There are people who legitimately don't know what the community is or have never heard of places like LessWrong.
From my lurking on space battles and other forums, I have seen people that know that lesswrong is just a collaborative blog yet still choose to use the "cult" label. At this point, "sneer troll" is probably the correct label for them. As to informing third parties, a link to lesswrong itself along with a few of its better posts should be enough to let someone figure out the cult claim is bullshit.
u/wren42 [+9] (11 hours later)
One of the very first posts in the less wrong sequences is about how emotion and rationality aren't opposed. Ridiculous straw man.
u/dalr3th1n [+6] (22 hours later)
Has he read the stories he's talking about? Luminosity!Bella and HPMOR!Harry are primarily motivated... by emotions!
u/Dwood15 [+6] (48 minutes later)
I love you.
u/bigjdp345 [+65] Custom Flair (47 minutes later)
Ugh. It's a good thing to have critics, but I really wish the criticism was better. Most of the issues the author seems to have with rational fiction really only hold for bad fiction. Having competent antagonists and secondary characters is a founding principle of rational fiction. It is definitely possible to evoke the feeling of a genre without jumping directly into its traps and inconsistencies. Rule based magic systems allow themselves to be used as major solutions without feeling anticlimactic. Trope longevity doesn't necessarily indicate the quality of a trope.
The observation that characters seem to become less human in rational fiction is true somewhat more often than the others. It's not true most of the time however and isn't a necessary part of rational fiction. Characters failing due to biases and errors in judgement is a hallmark of rational fiction, and I think rational fiction does a better job of handling this than a lot of other genres. It is a much more enjoyable thing to see a character make a mistake and then have that mistake dissected and analyzed than to have a character fail and never learn from it.
This view of rational fiction seems to take the worst pieces of fiction that claim the label and then say that the problems with them are inherent parts of rational fiction as a genre. This is problematic.
u/None [+18] (10 hours later)
[deleted]
u/bigjdp345 [+12] Custom Flair (11 hours later)
I am lumping them together and this is definitely a flaw in my reasoning. Thanks for pointing it out.
u/Kylinger [+32] (3 hours later)
Reading that was painful. How much do you have to dislike a label for something to call people who read it members of a cult? It's just so needlessly antagonistic.
u/None [+25] (6 hours later)
EY is a controversial man.
u/eaglejarl [+17] (8 hours later)
The part that amazes me is that they felt so strongly about this issue that they actively went out and started a discussion about it, just for the purpose of saying how awful this thing that they don't like is. They have denied and ridiculed the genre as a whole, as well as the very polite and reasonable words of the rational-fiction fans who have tried to engage with them.
Seriously, did a rational fiction author kick their dog or something? I asked them, but no one will respond.
u/CouteauBleu [+21] We are the Empire. (13 hours later)
I don't think this reddit thread is much better in the "you're so obsessive you can't stop talking about how awful we are" dynamic. Why do we even care what a bunch of people on another forum think?
u/veruchai [+19] (15 hours later)
The part that amazes me is that they felt so strongly about this issue that they actively went out and started a discussion about it, just for the purpose of saying how awful this thing that they don't like is.
Meh, this is very normal and fun. You just don't like being on the receiving side. Do you remember that Doctor Strange is the anti-rational movie and I hate it post we had a while ago? Pretty sure the director didn't kick any puppies.
Sure generalization is unfair but nothing new. We've seen that before with fanfiction being ridiculed. Presumably a lot of bad rational fiction has been uploaded and they got sick of seeing it.
u/CouteauBleu [+8] We are the Empire. (a day later)
For the record, I feel kind of bad for making that post, and I think I was a bit too aggressive writing it. It still was way less toxic than the SV thread.
u/None [+2] (5 days later)
Most of the comments in that thread are defending Dr. Strange.
u/callmebrotherg [+4] now posting as /u/callmesalticidae (23 hours later)
I spent a couple years of my life deep in what may or may not be a cult, but is definitely more of a cult than the rationalist community. It kind of pisses me off to see the term thrown around so lightly, not unlike "fascist."
u/royishere [+1] (a day later)
If they want to get mad about internet fanfic cults, they should really point their cannons at Andrew Blake/DAYD instead.
u/ZeroNihilist [+32] (13 hours later)
I find this exchange on page 15 funny:
The definition of rational fiction has been debated at great length, so I'm not going to touch on how it applies to unaffilliated works, but stories written to fall into that category follow guidelines summarized on /r/rational's sidebar:
Nothing happens solely because 'the plot requires it'. If characters do (or don't do) something, there must be a plausible reason.
Any factions are defined and driven into conflict by their beliefs and values, not just by being "good" or "evil".
The characters solve problems through the intelligent application of their knowledge and resources.
The rules of the fictional world are sane and consistent.
Which runs into the same issue that's been raised over and over - by this description, The Lord of the Rings is rational fiction. I Want My Hat Back is rational fiction. Frozen is rational fiction. Star Wars is rational fiction.
Really, as their examples of things that fit these criteria they picked The Lord of the Rings and Star Wars? They would be hard-pressed to find worse examples.
Star Wars literally has a dark side and a light side of the force, with the Empire committing genocide and the rebels saving planets of cute aliens.
The Lord of the Rings was explicitly constructed to be an epic about the conflict between good and evil. That's the entire point of the series.
It is simply staggering to me that they could say something so fundamentally incorrect yet still believe that they are shedding light on someone else's unacknowledged biases.
u/narfanator [+12] (14 hours later)
I started writing a reply to that, and then realized it would probably be pointless.
u/melmonella [+59] Tremble, o ye mighty, for a new age is upon you (18 minutes later)
I don't like the word "problematic". It doesn't mean anything other than "I don't like this" and makes the author seem like a pretentious ponce.
u/eaglejarl [+47] (40 minutes later)
Yeah, pretty much. He's got his opinion and he's sticking to it. Various people laid out some points in support of the idea "not all rational fiction is bad", but he and his supporters were having none of it.
One thing I noticed: the anti-RF crowd were really rude, and the pro-RF were not, despite the fact that we were the ones being attacked. Go, Team RatFic! I'm proud to be part of a community that has such positive norms.
u/melmonella [+9] Tremble, o ye mighty, for a new age is upon you (49 minutes later)
Also, quick question. Does Practical Guide To Evil count as rational fiction? Everything there happens because the plot requires it, but in that world Plot is, pretty much, a force of nature. It also violates second rule (factions are defined and driven into conflict by their beliefs and values, not just by being "good" or "evil") in a pretty obvious way.
u/CeruleanTresses [+5] (10 hours later)
I'd say it counts, since the characters aren't just swept along by the "narrative," but actively work around it or manipulate it to their own ends. It's not much different than a character in an Earth-like setting taking advantage of real-world physical principles to achieve their goals.
u/Anderkent [+3] (4 hours later)
The setting's been mostly consistent so far, so I'd say it is. I don't think it violates rule 2; some characters choose which side of the conflict they want to join, and just because the sides call themselves 'good' or 'evil' doesn't actually mean that's the root of the conflict.
u/None [+3] (16 hours later)
People only join the side of Good or Evil because their beliefs and values drive them to it, though, and "Good" and "Evil" are much more complex notions - to the point that we've got people on every point of the Good/Evil spectrum constantly scheming against eachother. If you think about who actually fights who in the story, only a small fraction of it is even Good vs. Evil at all.
u/GaBeRockKing [+3] Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857 (a day later)
PGtE isn't particularly rational, as it doesn't make a serious effort to have "fair play whodunnits." Given any particular decision, you can see that it was in-character with the information they had, but you likely couldn't have predicted the character would do them beforehand with the informationn you'd been given. There's also a fair bit of "not explaining the plan." What got me to decide it wasn't rational specifically was the way Spoilers. As a reader, I didn't know enough about how the in-universe narrative-causality worked to predict it beforehand in any real sense.
Of course, I might have missed some foreshadowing a few chapters earlier, in which case I'd be wrong.
It's still a great story, of course, and I'm happy to see it posted for discussion, but it's more rational-tangent than actually rational, like worm is.
cc: /u/CeruleanTresses
u/melmonella [+3] Tremble, o ye mighty, for a new age is upon you (a day later)
Given any particular decision, you can see that it was in-character with the information they had, but you likely couldn't have predicted the character would do them beforehand with the informationn you'd been given.
That's not actually a requirement for rational fiction as far as I can tell from the sidebar. Characters have to solve problems through the application of their knowledge, not yours.
Though yes, it was quite sudden. It has been foreshadowed a bit when Catherine was talking about revivals before, but not really in depth.
u/GaBeRockKing [+4] Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857 (a day later)
The reason I consider the fair play whodunnit as crucial to rational fiction is because it's the means by which we determine whether the other tenets of rational fiction were upheld.
1.) Nothing happens solely because 'the plot requires it'. If characters do (or don't do) something, there must be a plausible reason.
Here, if you only find out the plausible reason after the fact, that's functionally identical to something happening because the plot required it; the author made something happen, and then provided the justification. Of maybe they planed everything books in advance, but the point is that we wouldn't know.
2.) Any factions are defined and driven into conflict by their beliefs and values, not just by being "good" or "evil".
This one doesn't actually require a fair play whodunnit, I admit.
3.) The characters solve problems through the intelligent application of their knowledge and resources.
Here, again, the fair play whodunnit is necessary. Without holding the information in advance, it's again impossible to tell if the character was given their information previously, or if the author decidedto bestow that information to get out of a corner they'd written themselves into. Offscreen character knowledge a character couldn't be expected to know is functionally identical to powers as the plot demands.
4.) The rules of the fictional world are sane and consistent.
And this one pretty clearly requires the fair-play whodunnit as well. If we don't understand the rules of the fictional world, then we can't make a judgement on if they're sane and consistent.
Of course, not all of these things need to happen all of the time; an author can chose to break genre conciets to make better writing. But it's my personal judgement that PGtE doesn't follow these rules often enough (well, save 3, paradoxically) to qualify as rational. If there was some way to predict its internal narrative causality, it would count. But with the system as vague as it is, it's too hard to predict to be properly rational.
u/melmonella [+1] Tremble, o ye mighty, for a new age is upon you (a day later)
Here, if you only find out the plausible reason after the fact, that's functionally identical to something happening because the plot required it
I'd define author fiat as a deliberate subversion of probability in favor of the plot. That way you can still check for it backwards:if the resulting action was highly improbable even despite the explanation, then it's bad and not rational fiction.
Without holding the information in advance, it's again impossible to tell if the character was given their information previously
I mean, just re-read that part of the book knowing what the character knew at that point? If some action seems out of place, author fiat happened. If everything is fine, it's still rational fiction.
If we don't understand the rules of the fictional world
What character knows isn't rules, I don't think.
If there was some way to predict its internal narrative causality, it would count.
See my post here. It's actually pretty causal, with strict Plot structure.
u/GaBeRockKing [+1] Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857 (a day later)
I'd define author fiat as a deliberate subversion of probability in favor of the plot. That way you can still check for it backwards:if the resulting action was highly improbable even despite the explanation, then it's bad and not rational fiction.
But the problem with "checking it backwards," is that the author gets to decide the probabilities after the fact. That lets them skew the probabilities to whatever would work, again making the lack of a fair play whodunit effectively author fiat.
I mean, just re-read that part of the book knowing what the character knew at that point? If some action seems out of place, author fiat happened. If everything is fine, it's still rational fiction.
Knowledge is power. Central to the idea of rationalfic is that characters don't get new powers as the plot demands. Even if the character could have reasonably expected to have that knowledge, not revealing the knowledge to the reader beforehand makes it a result of plot fiat, because the author could have made up any other piece of knowledge and used it instead. Spoilers
I even run into this problem myself-- in my own fic, even though I (try to) foreshadow discoveries about the magic system in advance, I could easily have interpreted the magic system in some other way, and the readers wouldn't have known. As such, I don't consider my fic as meeting requirement #4, and only consider it as fulfilling #1 and #3 because the main conflict is political, rather than being about the magic system itself.
What character knows isn't rules, I don't think.
This might be a definition issue, as mine is pretty wide. I define a setting's rules to be any in-text thing that restricts how the reader can expect the plot to progress. For example, prophecies, limits on superpowers, clearly-deliniated moral boundraries, etcetera. Out-of-text narrative causality is not part of those rules.
Thus, I consider in-character knowledge as part of a setting's rules because, at least in a rational fic, a character's actions are constrained by what they know (as opposed to fortuitous hunches).
How do you define what a setting's rules are?
See my post here. It's actually pretty causal, with strict Plot structure.
I admit-- this could negate my previous arguments. I don't have any direct arguments against your conclusions, but I'm not convinced that they have predictive power.
I'll cede the discussion if, from an explanation of where we currently are in the plot, you can offer a general prognosis of how the story will develop in the short term. I'm not asking for specific events (that would be unfair) but more a prediction of which part of the hero's journey will be hit in the near-future of the story. I don't tend to read particularly in depth (I love PGtE, but I'm not really the kind of person that does a ton of analysis), so, unfortunately, you're going to have to PM me, but I do promise to accept any reasonable interpretation of how an event matches up with your prediction.
"Reasonable" is of course a bit of a weasel word, so to more rigorously define it in this context, I mean that an interpretation must concern a plot-advancing event, rather than one intended primarily for characterization or world-building. I also ask that, under your own subjective judgement, no superior candidate for some other, disjunct part of the cycle happened prior or after. (For example, you predict that we're at "call to adventure" and that we'll see "refusal of the call," but a candidate for "meeting with the mentor" happens before to the refusal.
I'm dropping burden of proof pretty hard on you, and I'm sorry for that, but you seem like you'd be doing this kind of analysis anyways :P
u/melmonella [+1] Tremble, o ye mighty, for a new age is upon you (a day later)
Well, you define rational fiction not how I define it-e.g. I don't consider it "Central to the idea of rationalfic is that characters don't get new powers [knowledge, in this context] as the plot demands". Characters can get things as plot demands it, as long as there is a plausible reason for it(as there was one, in the case of Catherine) I am not sure what else is there to discuss. I agree that a lot of appeal in rational fiction is being able to guess where the plot is going to go, but I don't think it's strictly necessary. Often happens due to how the four rules interract, but not absolutely required.
EDIT: lemme still give you some analysis of PGtE though, one minute.
u/GaBeRockKing [+2] Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857 (a day later)
Well, that's that, I suppose. Thank you for the polite argument.
u/melmonella [+1] Tremble, o ye mighty, for a new age is upon you (a day later)
One minute, I am still going to give you PGtE analysis. I just don't see the point in discussing general rational fiction stuff anymore.
u/melmonella [+1] Tremble, o ye mighty, for a new age is upon you (a day later)
How do you define what a setting's rules are?
Whatever laws of physics/Not!physics are in play. E.g. Name magic in PGtE, Rule Of Three stuff, interraction between magical weapons and Named, all that stuff. Characters may or may not be correct in their assumptions about the actual rules.
I'll cede the discussion if, from an explanation of where we currently are in the plot, you can offer a general prognosis of how the story will develop in the short term.
O come on, that's not fair. We are literally one interlude away from the epilogue of this book. That's pretty much the most unpredictable place in the whole story-this revolution of Hero's Journey just ended, new one will begin in the next book, we already received our Boon and other stuff.
I think that Heiress never actually wanted to rule Liese, and in the interlude we might see what her actual plan was. Given some previous foreshadowing about her father -"if he’d genuinely found a way to make flying fortresses less costly it could be very useful"-her wanting Liese just to use the population as sacrifices is a real possibility. That would also pay off all the mentions of flying fortresses in a satisfying way. Another possible plot development is re-appearance of Lone Swordsman as an undead abomination under control of the Heiress, since his body is in an extradimensional bubble controlled by her, though I don't think he will play a major role.
Hmm. Now that I think about him, we never saw the end of that supposed "redemption story" with him. Catherine is so in tune with her villainy that she isn't getting redeemed any time soon, but Swordsman was certainly doubting his heroism by the end of it. Problem was, he couldn't be redeemed as long as he was allied with the Choir of Contrition. If, however, he is raised as an undead abomination, and sees that Callow being governed by Catherine works... That has possibilities. I'll add it to the Possibility Hat.
In general, I think next book (I suppose it's possible that this won't happen until book 4, but I don't think that is likely) will focus on Catherine accquiring a new name, like The Dark Queen of Callow. To do that, she would have to overcome three challenges somehow related to Callow. I think that Heiress would be defeated by the end of the book, after 3 encounters with her (either the same ones, or a different parallel set), which would signify the triumph of New Age villainy over the old age crazyness. Procer is likely to make some sort of move soon too, since they had that Stairway thing and were clearly just using the rebellion to buy time. Catherine is likely to end up needing to protect Callow from a crusade at one point or another. Also, there were two elves who were heading for Liese to do something important there.
TL;DR predictions for the interlude/epilogue, from most to least likely:
- Heiress unveils her evil plan related to Liese
- Procer starts to make their move related to crusades
- Elves do something in Liese, very likely relating to Heiress
- Catherine finally tells the Empress what she wants (to rule Callow)
- Swordsman's body is mentioned and/or he is raised as an undead
- Black gets an explanation from the Empress
- Robber's Name is confirmed
u/GaBeRockKing [+1] Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857 (a day later)
Thank you for the analysis. I don't think all of your prediction follow from internal logic, but there are a fair number I'd not only concede the argument for, but be actually convinced that PGtE is a rational fic, and not just ceding the argument on its technical merits.
...she would have to overcome three challenges somehow related to Callow.
While a little vague on the timeline, you're making this prediction directly because of the setting's internal logic, so if Catherine needs exactly three callow-related challenges to get her name, this will definitely convince me that PGtE is a rationalfic.
I think that Heiress would be defeated by the end of the book, after 3 encounters with her (either the same ones, or a different parallel set), which would signify the triumph of New Age villainy over the old age crazyness.
If this happens, I'll cede the argument. Conditional to the "triumph of new age villany" being directly acknowledged in story, I'd also be convinced. The disparity is due to the fact that, as the viewpoint character, I'd expect Catherine to win anyways, so just her beating Hieress alone wouldn't quite convince me.
Heiress unveils her evil plan related to Liese
As your top prediction, if this happens in the epilogue, I'll cede the argument and be convinced of PGtE's status as a rationalfic, on the logic that if you can make a prediction that precise, then clearly the internal logic of PGtE is well define enough to be rational.
Robber's Name is confirmed
I myself can see where this follows from PGtE's internal logic, so if this happens in the epilogue, I'll both cede and be convinced.
Procer starts to make their move related to crusades
Elves do something in Liese, very likely relating to Heiress
Catherine finally tells the Empress what she wants (to rule Callow)
Swordsman's body is mentioned and/or he is raised as an undead
Black gets an explanation from the EmpressI'm rather iffier on these, as these predictions don't rely on the setting's internal logic with regards to narrative causality. If any of them happen in the epilogue, I'll concede, but probably won't be internally convinced.
So now we just need to wait for the next chapter. Which is hard enough without the resolution of an argument hanging over my head :( How could you do this to me, man?
u/melmonella [+1] Tremble, o ye mighty, for a new age is upon you (a day later)
While a little vague on the timeline, you're making this prediction directly because of the setting's internal logic, so if Catherine needs exactly three callow-related challenges to get her name, this will definitely convince me that PGtE is a rationalfic.
It will probably be more like 3 to get the name-3 to do something else, since both books so far seem to split into two roughly equal parts.
I myself can see where this follows from PGtE's internal logic, so if this happens in the epilogue, I'll both cede and be convinced.
I don't think Robber having a Name is extremely likely, but it seems to be so sensible. He is known as "the craziest goblin", casually does unique memorable things (e.g. that thing with the demons, or him riding a bomb towards the gates of Liese and then surviving the blast), is quite often involved in situations where only Named should really participate (e.g. he was the only non-Named in the room when Catherine was respawned). All of that points to him having a Name, in my opinion.
I'm rather iffier on these, as these predictions don't rely on the setting's internal logic with regards to narrative causality.
Yeah, they aren't terribly convincing, but to be fair, my original post was 50% bullshit on the spot anyways)
How could you do this to me, man?
That was my evil plan all along. MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA
u/melmonella [+1] Tremble, o ye mighty, for a new age is upon you (5 days later)
So, prediction 2 confirmed. Let's see what the epilogue brings. I want at least 3/7 to properly win this argument.
u/GaBeRockKing [+1] Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857 (5 days later)
Aw man, I hadn't read the chapter yet >.<. Luckily. i can't remember your predictions by number anyways.
u/melmonella [+1] Tremble, o ye mighty, for a new age is upon you (5 days later)
How about now?
u/GaBeRockKing [+1] Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857 (5 days later)
Huh, well, there you go. I concede the argument-- congratulations. Man, are the free cities dysfunctional.
u/melmonella [+1] Tremble, o ye mighty, for a new age is upon you (5 days later)
I don't accept your concession-as I've said, I want at least 3/7 for it to really count. As it is now it might be just a fluke, since I made so many guesses.
u/melmonella [+1] Tremble, o ye mighty, for a new age is upon you (12 days later)
Whoop whoop, predictions 1,2,3,5 and 6 seem to be correct!
u/GaBeRockKing [+1] Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857 (12 days later)
Well shit, if you're right that often, then I'm convinced :P. I asked for predictive power, and you gave it to me, so I now believe that APtE is rational.
u/melmonella [+1] Tremble, o ye mighty, for a new age is upon you (12 days later)
Or maybe I am just psychic.
u/eaglejarl [+1] (54 minutes later)
I haven't read it, I'm afraid. My reading (and, unfortunately, writing) have really dropped off recently.
u/Tanath [+2] LessWrong (than usual) (7 hours later)
Say what? Why are you dismissing the actual meaning of the word? Seems to me your typical reading between the lines for that word is incorrect.
u/Timewinders [+14] (8 hours later)
Seems pretty correct to me. When used in this sense, someone saying "such and such concept/idea/belief is problematic" is usually just a way of saying "I don't like this" or "I disagree". It would have been more honest for him to name the title "This is why rational fiction sucks" or something, but he used the word "problematic" to seem more authoritative and objective. It is pretty pretentious and arrogant.
u/melmonella [+2] Tremble, o ye mighty, for a new age is upon you (8 hours later)
Yeah, that.
u/Tanath [+4] LessWrong (than usual) (9 hours later)
Sorry, I was only responding to this comment, not its use in the title/article. Saying something is problematic does imply you disagree but that's not all its saying.
It may have been pretentious here but I don't think it usually is. Not in my experience anyway.
u/Roxolan [+11] Head of antimemetiWalmart senior assistant manager (10 hours later)
These days I see the word used as a broader (thus also harder-to-criticize) alternative to racist / sexist / etc. That's how Urban Dictionary lists it. It's sometimes a useful tool, sometimes a bothersome rhetorical tactic.
But in this instance it is indeed used as a synonym of "sucks".
u/Tanath [+16] LessWrong (than usual) (11 hours later)
Urban Dictionary definitions are often... problematic.
u/autourbanbot [+2] (10 hours later)
Here's the Urban Dictionary definition of problematic :
A corporate-academic weasel word used mainly by people who sense that something may be oppressive, but don't want to do any actual thinking about what the problem is or why it exists. Also frequently used in progressive political settings among White People of a Certain Education to avoid using herd-frightening words like "racist" or "sexist."
I don't know, something about SlutWalk seems highly problematic to me.
^(about) ^| ^(flag for glitch) ^| ^(Summon: urbanbot, what is something?)
u/melmonella [+3] Tremble, o ye mighty, for a new age is upon you (14 hours later)
Pretty much every time I see it used it's really pretentious. "Problematic" is the sort of word you should use in, dunno, scientific papers on "Outline of common problematics in the process of designing friendly general artificial intelligences" or similar stuff, not forum posts complaining about books someone wrote.
u/Tanath [+1] LessWrong (than usual) (18 hours later)
Sometimes I find it's the best word to use, or can't think of a better one. I haven't had any communication trouble with it, and that's speaking with ordinary people. I've never seen "problematics" before. Sounds pretentious to me.
u/melmonella [+1] Tremble, o ye mighty, for a new age is upon you (a day later)
Scientific paper names often are.
u/zarraha [+24] (47 minutes later)
All of these points are false and/or solve each other.
For points two and three, of course most fiction hase genre caveats and weird people who do things without using logic. The whole point is recognizing that fiction is riddled with these characters and putting a rational character into the middle of them. The main reason a lot of rational fiction is fanfiction is it's poking fun of and exploiting the fact that the cannon characters do irrational things and pointing out how they're being irrational.
Further, point two is definitely false. You can easily have a character who's rational and logical but isn't a cold emotionless robot. For example, basically any educated person in real life. Certainly some characters in some rational stories go too far, sometimes on purpose sometimes not. But since typical stories don't even attempt to use logic or rational behavior in the same way that humans do, it's not unreasonable to try to add some more logic. If you tried to write as realistic a character as possible into the Harry Potter universe, it would certainly end up looking a lot closer to HPMOR than it would to cannon.
As for point one, it's also blatantly false. You can write a story in which multiple or even all characters are rational. Or you could write one with rational characters and "normal" story characters. Maybe they'll look stupider in comparison, but it's only necessary to actually make them stupider if you're making a Mary Sue rational circlejerk fanservice sort of story. in HPMOR, he did sort of make Dumbledore... not stupid per se, but kind of weird in my opinion. But Quirrelmort was definitely rational. Hermione and Draco were rational at least in so far as they did things for well thought out, intelligent reasons. And most of the other characters were just sort of normal people.
Mostly this guy is just sort of taking the worst flaws that some rational fiction writers make and trying to argue that they're somehow inherent and unavoidable to the genre as opposed to over-exaggerations that some new writers occasionally make. An issue that occurs in all fanfiction, not just rational ones.
u/waylandertheslayer [+23] (9 hours later)
Dumbledore being weird annoyed me during the story, but after the reveal at the end that I was pleasantly surprised, and subsequent readthroughs were a lot more fun.
u/Iconochasm [+13] (17 hours later)
I just reread HPMOR again, and with the ending firmly in mind, most everything Dumbledore says makes complete sense. He was definitely laughing his ass off behind his poker face for his first few appearances.
u/FeepingCreature [+12] GCV Literally The Entire Culture (17 hours later)
Dumbledore works a lot better if after every conversation with Harry, you imagine him going into a quiet room and laughing his ass off.
u/RMcD94 [+2] (19 hours later)
Canon
u/TBestIG [+20] Every second of quibbling is another dead baby (7 hours later)
He's absolutely correct about pretty much everything he's saying, except for the fact that it only applies to bad rationalist fiction.
His first point about the main character being smart giving everyone else an intelligence downgrade is pretty funny, since most (well done) rational fanfiction actually gives the background and main characters more intelligence than canon, not less. I do agree that there's plenty of "HEY IM HARRY LOOK I SMART, DUMBLEDORE WHY ARE YOU SO INCOMPETENT AND SENILE," but you honestly can't say that those shit fics represent the whole genre.
u/waylandertheslayer [+18] (9 hours later)
I do agree that there's plenty of "HEY IM HARRY LOOK I SMART, DUMBLEDORE WHY ARE YOU SO INCOMPETENT AND SENILE," but you honestly can't say that those shit fics represent the whole genre.
In my experience, most fics like this aren't written by anyone intending to write rational!fics, they're just doing the standard Mary Sue smart!dark!powerful!godlike!12inchdick!Harry Potter-Slytherin-Black-Merlin-Peverell 'will get beat up sometimes'.
u/TBestIG [+3] Every second of quibbling is another dead baby (10 hours later)
True, but I do see it other places too. Glad hpmor subverted that
u/TastyBrainMeats [+10] (12 hours later)
Specifically in HPMOR, I wouldn't even necessarily call Harry more intelligent that Dumbledore. The two just have radically different perspectives and knowledge.
u/TBestIG [+4] Every second of quibbling is another dead baby (13 hours later)
HPMOR is not an example of what I mentioned, Yudkowsky is pretty good at doing what he does.
u/FeepingCreature [+20] GCV Literally The Entire Culture (4 hours later)
This continues to back up my belief that your reaction to HPMOR primarily depends on whether you read Harry as "what a little shit" or "so adorable I just want to hug him".
u/PhilipTrettner [+22] (7 hours later)
I thought of Harry (in HPMOR) as "what a little shit" and absolutely loved HPMOR. Does that mean that people who find Harry "adorable AF" don't like HPMOR?
u/FeepingCreature [+9] GCV Literally The Entire Culture (8 hours later)
Woah weird. Wouldn't have predicted that.
A lot of the people in that thread seem to describe Harry as a little shit and I was wondering whether it relates.
u/eaglejarl [+27] (8 hours later)
For the record, I think that Harry was frequently a smug, obnoxious jerk. I also think he had the best intentions, cared a lot about people and the world in general, and was really clever.
The people in the thread keep saying that he "doesn't act human". He doesn't act like an 11-year-old, true. That's a little jarring, although there's an in-universe reason. I think what they really mean is that "he behaves like a utilitarian and I believe that no one behaves like a utilitarian and/or utilitarians are horrible people because they do things that I see as bad on a local scale just because it's good on a global scale."
HPMOR definitely had flaws, but I enjoyed it tremendously, despite thinking that Harry was often smug and obnoxious.
u/clawclawbite [+14] (13 hours later)
As someone who was a bit of a smug know it all at 11, I had a lot of sympathy for him because he did read as a smart kid who totally did not get people, in a weird outlier kind of way.
u/PhilipTrettner [+12] (8 hours later)
Maybe it's just more nuanced. I think Harry is a smart ass and probably an unpleasant person to have around (which qualifies as "what a little shit" in my book). I still like him a lot and I believe that that's not cognitive dissonance but rather identification ;)
u/None [+9] (a day later)
I thought he was a little shit. I spend a fair of time wishing I could be a smug little shit myself and not suffer the consequences, so watching Harry be a smug little shit was lovely. Oddly, the consequences he suffered did not detract from that.
u/TastyBrainMeats [+2] (12 hours later)
I can like a character for their flaws, and HJPE-V has some doozies.
u/CeruleanTresses [+11] (10 hours later)
I thought he was a little shit and I appreciated that this was acknowledged in the narrative, and that he eventually recognized it as a flaw to work on. His personality was definitely unpleasant to me, especially in the beginning, but I still enjoyed reading about him because I identified with many aspects of his worldview and goals.
u/FeepingCreature [+8] GCV Literally The Entire Culture (13 hours later)
Okay so there's three nodes at least, "finds Harry adorable", "finds Harry a shit but appreciates he gets better" and "identifies with Harry's goals". Maybe it's max()?
u/LiteralHeadCannon [+9] (20 hours later)
My reaction is definitely "what a little shit, but he raises a lot of valid points".
u/callmebrotherg [+8] now posting as /u/callmesalticidae (23 hours later)
I don't find myself on either extreme, but am definitely closer to "HP is a little shit" than "HP is so adorable I just want to hug him."
OTOH, I'm not in love with HPMOR either. I do like it a lot, but I think that it has a number of flaws and its chief value is not in itself, but in the genre that it inspired.
u/AurelianoTampa [+21] (9 hours later)
Such an odd rant. One of the reasons I really enjoy rational fiction is because this:
One: To create a hypercompetent main narrator you must make everyone else incompetent.
... is not supposed to happen. I can think of several rational or rationalist fanfictions I've read where the source material has much more incompetence; HPMOR, R!Animorphs, Pokemon: TOoS, Metropolitan Man, Luminosity.
I wonder what the ranter had been reading?
Which leads into the second problem with rational fics: the characters are too focused on 'intelligence' or 'rationality' and somehow forget to be people.
Sometimes I can see this as a valid point, but usually the longer a work goes on, the less I feel that way. I've been eating up Heroes Save the World recently and originally felt the kids were just too emotionally detached to be believably dealing with the situation... and then I get to an entire chapter that focuses on the trauma it's been inflicting on one of them.
And in some other fics with rational themes (if not exactly rational entirely), it's a plot point. In The Games We Play it is mentioned as a plot point several times that the kind of modifications and trials facing the main character should be cracking his mind like an egg, but his power helps protect him and make it no more traumatic than, well, a game.
Plus what's the point of having real conflicts if your character will just go 'this is the optimal' solution, solve it, done done NO FUCKING TENSION AT ALL.
Again, this seems to make no sense and makes me wonder what he's been reading. I can't think of any rational fiction I've read with a straight-up Mary Sue who instantly figures out the best method and never makes a mistake. A huge part of the drama is that the characters often know they don't know enough and hope their plan works based on their limited information or options. Plenty of rational fiction is extremely dark for exactly this reason; Worm comes to mind.
Three: Do you realize what genre cavets and aesthetic trappings are?
I just think this is a matter of preference. Some people prefer not to look deeper at the concepts in a story - they are happy to go along for the ride and trust that things will work out. But it's a key part of rational fiction that there are rules (even if they may be almost entirely unknown). I much prefer creative solutions to macguffins or "it happened for the sake of the plot." Others, maybe, do not. But even then there are fictions where the twist is that the plot or macguffin are also guided by rules. A Practical Guide to Evil has this as a running theme; the meta-conflict is whether the structure set up by Good and Evil can be overthrown, and if the characters are actually doing so or are just acting out their roles. Unsong is entirely based on this; everything that happens is for the sake of the plot, because nothing is a coincidence.
As mentioned, I wish the ranter had given some concrete examples of what works he's thinking about. The only one I think I've read on Sufficient Velocity is Dungeon Keeper Ami, and I think the only point of his that might apply is the idea of incompetent foes.
Edit: One last thing is that the ranter's definition of "rational" does not match what I think of (which is the sidebar here). His rant specifically seems to be against science porn that masquerades as rationalist fiction. Not actually rational fiction in general.
u/callmebrotherg [+5] now posting as /u/callmesalticidae (23 hours later)
I've been eating up Heroes Save the World recently
!!!
and originally felt the kids were just too emotionally detached to be believably dealing with the situation... and then I get to an entire chapter that focuses on the trauma it's been inflicting on one of them.
It may interest you to know that I'm trying to work on a chapter where Simon talks to his therapist. I don't know if it'll work, but it feels like an important aspect to shed light on.
u/Jiro_T [+2] (4 days later)
I would not count Worm as rational fiction. it does have cases of characters thinking things through, but it also has as a more or less explicit conceit that shards mess up people's ability to be clearheaded and get along, as well as having cosmic entities that think in arbitrary ways and several plot devices. And not every character uses their abilities in the most efficient way (I have a hard time seeing why Contessa doesn't get up each week and go "path to having a list of the 20 most interesting things that will happen this week, by my current standards and assuming no further uses of this power".)
Some of these things are arguably rational, but I'd say they are only rational in a trivial way. "People fight because shards make them want to" is, literally, people doing things for a reason, so the definition is literally satisfied, but I think that goes against its spirit.
u/Sailor_Vulcan [+20] Champion of Justice and Reason (2 hours later)
Does anybody actually care what that jerk on sufficient velocity thinks of rational fiction? Are the things they're saying common misconceptions, are they things that will harm the reputation of this genre and of people who read it? Or is it just some random person who doesn't matter who learned to speak trollish as a second language so that they could post on the internet about how angry they are that other people like something they don't like? And if that's the case wouldn't it be better to just ignore people like them because anything we say to them would only fuel their trollrage?
u/FenrirW0lf [+38] (3 hours later)
Someone in the discord group compared the situation to that of a courtroom. The main prosecutors in that thread might not change their minds in response to defenders of rational fiction, but presenting a defense gives all the random people who come across that thread (the jury, as it were) a chance to examine things from both sides instead of seeing nothing but consensus.
u/melmonella [+4] Tremble, o ye mighty, for a new age is upon you (8 hours later)
Discord group?
u/elevul [+3] Cyoria Observer (8 hours later)
If there is a discord group, I definitely want in too.
u/AugSphere [+8] Dark Lord of Corruption (9 hours later)
Here you go. /u/melmonella too. The
power was within youlink was in the side bar all along.
u/melmonella [+9] Tremble, o ye mighty, for a new age is upon you (14 hours later)
In the immortal words of one crazy pyromaniac:
“Are you going to do that thing where you give me cryptic advice that later comes in useful at a critical moment?” I asked, trying to convey how irritating that particular habit was through my tone.
Black took a sip from his cup, though not quickly enough to hide that he’d actually been a little offended by that. I tried not to be openly amused, though not very hard.
“Well not now, I’m not,”
Thanks for the link.
u/CouteauBleu [+3] We are the Empire. (13 hours later)
I can't really argue against that reasoning, but oh boy does it produce a shitty dynamic. I really don't know if it's worth it.
u/blazinghand [+2] Chaos Undivided (a day later)
yeah, also arguing is fun
u/Anderkent [+18] (4 hours later)
I feel like a large part of the disagreement is the expectation that
rationalfiction should be a well defined genre, with sharp lines deciding whether a particular fic is or isn't rational. That might be the case for rationalist fiction, but rational fiction really just stands for writing that people around here like.And hey, it might be that the things that make some book good to us (consistent characters, a sensible setting that follows its own rules, etc) are also the things that make some book good to other fanfic communities. There's definitely a self-selection process going on here. Thus the occasional statement of 'rational just means good'.
It doesn't. Rational means good for us. "50 shades of grey" and "Twilight" are good fiction. Look at the sales! People LIKE them. Maybe not the people around here, maybe not the kind of people that go into detailed analysis of particular fiction genres on online forums. But others do.
So we need a word for a particular class of writing that appeals to us, that is consistent and well characterised and avoids plot holes etc. etc. Because we used to call that 'good', but that is empirically incorrect. And 'rational' is a word, it fits the spirit of the concept, and so it took off.
u/DaystarEld [+9] Pokémon Professor (4 hours later)
That might be the case for rationalist fiction, but rational fiction really just stands for writing that people around here like.
I kind of disagree with this. I mean, yeah, we had to find a label for it and that's the one that stuck, but "rational fiction" pretty well describes the core tenets of the genre, as defined in the sidebar and on the tvtropes page and elsewhere.
I don't see why we should back down from the label and say "Rational means good for us." No, rational fiction means rationally written and explored fiction. Not all rational fiction is "good" and not all non-rational fiction is "bad."
And that doesn't mean my taste in stories isn't affected, to some degree, by how rational it is. I liked The Dark Knight even though it's got plotholes big enough to drive a batmobile through, but I didn't like The Dark Knight Rises because those plot holes were big enough to sink a football stadium into. (Was it a football stadium? I forget. You get the point.) If TDK was more irrational I would have liked it less, and vice-versa. But I can explain why, objectively. That I care about those things is part of my personal taste, but those things themselves are not.
u/ketura [+11] Organizer (12 hours later)
The one dude who called the term "rational fiction" a "marketing term", while being derisive, wasn't so far off the mark. I'm not so sure that rational fiction is a genre so much as a collection of secondary attributes that can apply to any genre. It would be like calling "stream-of-consciousness" a genre, when it's really more of a tactic or style used.
I think this is supported by the fact that "rational" is a bit of a sliding scale; no one gets into arguments over whether or not a story is fantasy, or more fantasy than another fantasy (barring perhaps Star Wars), but whether a story is rational is very much greyscale. Some stories are more rational than others.
In addition, would it be possible to have a rational story that did not overlap on any other genre circle in a venn diagram? A rational story that was not also a mystery, or a superhero story, or a sci-fi, or what have you? If it can't stand alone, I'm not sure it deserves to be called a genre.
u/callmebrotherg [+9] now posting as /u/callmesalticidae (23 hours later)
The one dude who called the term "rational fiction" a "marketing term", while being derisive, wasn't so far off the mark. I'm not so sure that rational fiction is a genre so much as a collection of secondary attributes that can apply to any genre.
This. I had to stop reading the thread because People Being Wrong In Obvious And Simple Ways is very frustrating, but I was hoping that we might be able to come up with a better definition of rational fiction.
I like how you describe it as an approach rather than a genre. Maybe it's comparable in that sense to e.g. "grimdark." I don't think that you can quite have a "grimdark genre" but there's definitely a cluster of shared qualities, and you could easily have an /r/grimdark that talked about grimdark fiction. Hell, insofar as some people think that all good literature has to be depressing as fuck, you could easily see a "Why 'Grimdark' is Problematic" thread where some of the posters are arguing that "grimdark" is just being used to describe good fiction and is a useless term.
u/DaystarEld [+4] Pokémon Professor (15 hours later)
Oh absolutely, there's rational sci-fi and rational fantasy and so on. But I don't think there's any reason it needs fo stand alone to be a genre.
I actually think of it like "romance." Lots of settings and stories can be considered romance stories in addition to their other descriptions, but if you just call something a romance story, or a rational story, the implication is that at the very leasr you know something about it, even if it's a modern, realistic story.
u/ketura [+5] Organizer (15 hours later)
There's still a pretty big leap between a story being a Romance, and a story having romantic elements (such as Star Wars). I wouldn't call Star Wars a Romance, there's a very particular focus that romantic stories have that Star Wars delegates to the backburner.
Which makes the comparison to Rational pretty apt, I suppose. We have a conflation of vocabulary between Rational the genre that presupposes munchinry, transhumanism, AI, competency porn, and setting fixing, and the rational elements that we have on the sidebar. We've noticed this problem and have bandied about "rationalist" to attempt to address it, but I think that's fixing a different problem.
So as usual, I guess we have vocabulary to blame at the heart of it all. Rational the genre, vs rational elements, and one side is talking about one while the other is objecting about the perceived sleight on the other.
u/InfernoVulpix [+5] (14 hours later)
On the rational writing podcast, when discussing the definition of rational fiction, the idea that it was 'thinky' fiction came up, that a common feature in rational stories is that they made you think about what was going on.
I think it's slightly more general than that, and I'll say that I think the (or, at least, a) core of rational fiction is that intelligence is a core virtue of the story. Battles will be won and lost primarily based on who had the better plan, who prepared more, who improvised the quickest, and so on. This would be in contrast to the 'generic action show' where Determination and Fighting For What You Believe In are core virtues that decide the outcome. In generic action show, whether the battle is won or lost depends almost entirely on whether the hero can get his second wind when things look down (often triggering some superpower to justify the success of said second wind, but it's the same thing).
This explains quite a few things, such as why rational fics tend to have anticlimaxes more than usual. You specifically need a long, drawn-out fight to show off the raw willpower and determination of the protagonist at the climax, but in rational fiction you don't specifically need that, since you can show off the cunning of the protagonist and the extent they planned and prepared or the quality of their improvisation in a single scene where the enemy was outsmarted and simply had no hope of victory. Of course, you can do drawn out fights this way too, but the key is that it's not required. The focus on intelligence also helps explain the attention to detail and consistent rules, since your protagonist is supposed to live and die based on whether they can plan things out and grasp for advantages, and an inscrutable 'as the plot demands' ruleset is incompatible with that, whereas you don't need the rules to behave the same way to force your protagonist to the brink of defeat before their show of determination and second wind.
u/None [+1] (5 hours later)
I think a story could be rational and yet be the most and most terrible boring story you ever read. Nobody ever tried to write one, though.
Maybe the conflict is non-existent or completely trivial. Maybe the characters are just boring or bland. Maybe the technical quality or pacing is just bad.
u/Anderkent [+1] (20 hours later)
Right, but I think that again conflates the two meanings of good? Apologies if the below doesn't make sense; I haven't tried to express this before and am not willing to spend a long time getting it intelligible. (do let me know if this at least aims in the right direction, or if it's completely useless)
You can write a 'good', well-written, consistently characterised, internally-making-sense story, and it still not actually being liked by anyone, and not good.
You can also (though it seems very hard, and I don't know whether it was ever achieved) write a story with completely non-conventional/'bad' writing, that makes no sense, but still is so emotionally evocative that it is well liked and good.
Most people don't really care about the 'good'/'bad' distinction; it's somewhat correlated with the story being good/bad, because in the extremes 'bad' is incomprehensible to everyone. But if you naturally take stories apart, try to figure out how they work, guess at the rules governing the imagined word... If that is essential for you to enjoy a story, then good can de facto become a subset of 'good'.
The way these concepts map for me, 'good' is rational. No one's interested in bad 'good' stories (uninteresting, boring rational stories), so it doesn't get talked about. good 'bad' (compelling but non-rational) stories are rare for me, because of how I enjoy fiction, but common in popular culture.
u/Restinan [+16] (18 hours later)
A lot of the confusion regarding what rational fiction is seems to come from the fact that literally nobody from SV in that entire thread managed to understand that the bullet point definition that's being given is an extensional definition, not an intensional one. It points in rational fiction's general definition, it's not a fully complete necessary and sufficient set of constraints by which rational fiction is defined. It's like pointing to a bunch of red things to define what red is, rather than defining a specific wavelength range of light. In addition, the bullet points in the sidebar don't really mean "it's definitely rational fiction if it has these qualities." Instead, they're more along the lines of things that something has to have or it definitely isn't rational fiction. Actually narrowing things down from the stories the bullet points bring forward to just the stories that a reader of /r/rational would call rational fiction would take a bunch more bullet points.
On an unrelated point, they seem to viscerally hate us, and I recognize that flavor of hate. It's the type of thing I see whenever someone else in the room fails to hide how nerdy they are. I mean, look at the language they're using. Robotic. Not human. That's pretty familiar to me.
I really didn't expect SV to get in on the whole "let's hate the nerds" thing, considering, y'know, they're nerds. But apparently to urge to hate nerds is so strong it can infect nerdy communities and make them hate more nerdy communities.
u/eaglejarl [+10] (a day later)
I am totally onboard with your original post; I would +1 insightful if that were a thing Reddit did.
That said, I would like to offer warning to your edit:
First off, the categories you are dividing people into have an implicit value statement: the people who like cerebral things that are useful and require skill and/or diligence are being put in one group while the trivial hobbies are going in the other. That's okay until you class the groups as "us" and "them."
Second, my sense of society is that most people would reverse your definitions -- "geek chic" refers to programmers et al, while "nerds" refers to comic book readers and D&D players in mom's basement.
u/Restinan [+2] (a day later)
Y'know, you're absolutely right. Edit deleted.
u/Timewinders [+17] (8 hours later)
I've never understood the disdain of SBers and SVers towards rational fic, especially since many of the stories there contain the same kind of competence porn and characters suffering from their biases. It's especially ironic since the stories on those forums more explicitly serve as wish fulfillment.
u/embrodski [+30] (11 hours later)
A heretic is someone who believes almost the exact same thing as you. You must destroy them.
u/Restinan [+12] (19 hours later)
The funny thing is, when they read rational fic that they don't know is rational fic, they love it. I think they just viscerally hate the label.
u/UltraRedSpectrum [+9] (a day later)
I can second this sentiment. I have a story that I post here and to Spacebattles, and I haven't got an ounce of vitriol.
u/CeruleanTresses [+13] (10 hours later)
The part of this that resonated with me was the section about lack of tension. Good rational/ist fiction does have tension, but I can't deny that I've stumbled into more than a few "fix fic"-type stories where the hero just smugly solves every problem without setbacks, and it becomes less of a story and more of a dressed-up list of complaints about the original work or genre--or, in some cases, a love letter to the perfect brilliant rational hero. Of all the traps this type of fiction can fall into, that's always the one that disappoints me the most.
u/ZeroNihilist [+7] (11 hours later)
This definitely happens in some rational fiction but I don't see it as endemic to the genre, and certainly not a defining characteristic of it.
A lot of stories, regardless of genre, are poorly plotted. Rational fiction is neither exempt nor exemplar.
It's a tricky thing to balance, sometimes, maintaining tension without resorting to deus ex machina or contrived solutions ("But wait, what if I try something I've never done before nor will ever do again?" // "That's so crazy it just might work!"). If it were easy to do then there wouldn't be so many examples (across all media and genres) which get it wrong.
u/AurelianoTampa [+3] (11 hours later)
The part of this that resonated with me was the section about lack of tension.
Do you have some particular works in mind? The only recommendation from this site I've read recently that felt like this was The Gods Are Bastards, but really it's just because after 11 volumes without a main character dying or suffering a disastrous failure, I tend to expect them to make it through somehow.
I'd still recommend the series, though; great world and character building.
u/narfanator [+1] (14 hours later)
without a main character dying Hehehehehe. Are you caught up?
Note that very few characters die; and of those, it's all minor characters. I don't even think we've seen a proper supporting character kick the bucket.
u/AurelianoTampa [+1] (14 hours later)
Haven't started volume 12 yet :)
My meaning was that I doubt it's suddenly going to veer into grimdark territory. Harry Potter had characters die by the end too, but I never really doubted that the good guys would pull through. I get the same feeling from TGAB; it's not a criticism, just an echoing that the "tension" isn't at the same level as, say, Worm (which frankly I didn't like as much as I like TGAB).
u/melmonella [+2] Tremble, o ye mighty, for a new age is upon you (2 days later)
I'd rather it didn't, honestly. There is plenty of grimdark stuff out there, no reason to make yet another story about that.
u/None [+11] (22 hours later)
Plus what's the point of having real conflicts if your character will just go 'this is the optimal' solution, solve it, done done NO FUCKING TENSION AT ALL.
Did... Did you actually read any rational fiction?
u/FeepingCreature [+11] GCV Literally The Entire Culture (a day later)
IT'S OVER
/r/rational, IT IS OVER! HE DID IT, HE SAVED US! THE WAR IS OVER!
Merry Fucking Christmas.
u/AugSphere [+3] Dark Lord of Corruption (6 days later)
And it's on again. I guess the architect was right after all.
u/scruiser [+1] CYOA (a day later)
Ironically it was locked only a few pages after the discussion finally started to develop in a reasonable direction.
u/traverseda [+9] With dread but cautious optimism (23 hours later)
So, points that I found somewhat reasonable from that.
- Our definition of "rational fiction" is too broad.
I think this is largely related to "The rules of the fictional world are sane and consistent". Some of the posters there couldn't tell whether or not a world was sane and consistent, saying that "star wars" and "lord of the rings" were.
- Our use of the world "rational" implies that we think we're better then them, and that rational fiction is strictly superior to all other fiction because it's rational.
u/The_Magus_199 [+8] Ankh-Morpork City Watch (a day later)
Why... Why the Ayn Rand comparisons? Like, being called a cult is bad enough, but calling people who happen to like a certain category of fiction fucking Objectivists is simply uncalled for!
u/clawclawbite [+8] (13 hours later)
There are a wide range of genres and characters focused on hypercompetance. Pulling out applied science and problem solving as a bad place for it seems nitpicking. No one seems to have issues with Conan being good with a sword. Large sections of mystery as a genre are people who solve crimes that baffle professionals. No one has issues with mcgyver solving problems as long as he limits himself to solution sets that include duct tape.
I do think some people have issues with stories about people who are outliers in terms of temperament and approach. I've seen a number of people who are upset that the martian is not a meditation on human isolation because they can not imagine themselves or anyone they personally know be able to keep their calm in a crisis, but such people do exist.
u/eroticas [+7] (17 hours later)
Ok here's my question: Why is all the criticism of the LW/EA/rationalsphere absolutely terrible?
Like I have never heard at least one critique competent enough in the ideas they are criticizing to pass an ideological turing test...
u/ThatDarnSJDoubleW [+8] (21 hours later)
Most critiques of anything in general aren't competent enough to pass an ideological turing test. If they were, you'd call them rational or rationalist and not treat them as a critique from outside the rationalsphere.
u/callmebrotherg [+5] now posting as /u/callmesalticidae (23 hours later)
Exhibit A: Welcome to the Rationalist Movement, Phil Sandifer.
u/eaglejarl [+16] (18 hours later)
The essential idea of EA / LW / CFAR is "figure out the best available methods to achieve your goals". Those methods tend to be strongly divergent from mainstream thought -- for example, some average Joe hears, without context, that the EA crowd said "giving to Toys For Tots is not an effective way to save and improve lives". Joe immediately says "you monsters! You're against kids getting toys?! That's mean!" Then the EA crowd says "giving $3,000 to TfT makes 100 kids happy for a day. Giving it to the AMF saves someone's life." Joe is now in the awkward position of either admitting he was wrong or doubling down on how horrible the EA person is.
u/Anderkent [+7] (a day later)
Thread locked, and I'm glad for it. Wasn't really enjoying reading it and yet kept coming back because 'hey people might be insulting me behind my back' :P
u/Admiral_Skippeh [+20] (11 hours later)
Guy from the thread you're talking about here! I'm a member and moderator on Sufficient Velocity.
If you guys think there are specific clarifications you can raise constructively (and it seems like you have a number of them), then I'd encourage you to come along and do so. We can appear like a somewhat acerbic community at first, and we have a few boylishly mischievous members like Jemite, but honestly we're a pretty friendly bunch when you get to know us. ^_^
More viewpoints raised in the friendly and good-natured way that rationalists tend to when approaching others could only enrich the discourse, I'd hope. Even if you just repeated some of the statements you'd made here addressed to the posts or comments you felt relevant, I'm sure it would make a positive impact.
Hope to see some of you! : )
u/narfanator [+12] (14 hours later)
Thanks for popping in here! I skimmed the thread, and the impression that I got is that we're being well repped by BlazingHand, and others; I certainly couldn't do a better job.
I would not call Jemite's tone "boylishly mischievous". He's picking a fight, and not out of fun, or good nature.
u/Jemnite [+5] 'Boyishly Mischievous' (21 hours later)
I'm always fun and I'm always good natured! I don't know why you would have any other impression of my delightfully whimsical and cheery personality.
I would, however, disagree on being described as 'boyishly mischievous'. I may be on occasion, mischievous, but I haven't been a child for ages /u/Admiral_Skippeh!
Hmph!
u/WildRonin [+4] (22 hours later)
jemnite you shitposting little shit.
But in all seriousness, huh your user's the same here on reddit and on SV? Cool. Oh and hi /u/Admiral_Skippeh good to see y'all here! ...do we have a SV subreddit?
u/Jemnite [+3] 'Boyishly Mischievous' (22 hours later)
I don't shitpost this is a false accusation I am calling my libel lawyer immediately for a consultation so please retract your statement immediately.
lol but, more seriously I've been using this username for some years now, and I keep it standardized across different services for mostly ease of identification really. And the answer is no, there's no SV subreddit. (There's not really a point because SV is in itself is a forum of its own as well as a community.)
u/WildRonin [+3] (22 hours later)
fukin try it i'm behind 5 advocates
Oh, eh I prefer variety but I'm crazy like that. And yeah, I figured. I mean it'd be neat to have but not something necessarily needed.
u/Admiral_Skippeh [+1] (a day later)
I would submit "loveable scamp" as an alternative. :P
u/Jemnite [+3] 'Boyishly Mischievous' (a day later)
Lol that makes me sound like someone out of a Charles Dickens novel.
u/WildRonin [+1] (2 days later)
r u not?
u/CouteauBleu [+8] We are the Empire. (13 hours later)
I don't think this SV thread is a good environment for constructive debate. Whatever the reason, most of the discussion I've seen is mostly of the "You're wrong! Here's an extensive list of reasons why!" "No, YOU'RE wrong. Here's an extensive list of every single factual inaccuracy you said!" kind.
(plus debates about LoTR, but they're still better than all the toxicity)
u/Anderkent [+8] (20 hours later)
Plus, more prosaically, a forum without threaded replies eliminates any possibility of dialogue.
u/CouteauBleu [+1] We are the Empire. (a day later)
Oh yeah, I'm starting to forget those are still a thing :p
u/eaglejarl [+13] (19 hours later)
Guy from the thread you're talking about here! I'm a member and moderator on Sufficient Velocity.
If you guys think there are specific clarifications you can raise constructively (and it seems like you have a number of them), then I'd encourage you to come along and do so.
Hi, /u/Admiral_Skippeh.
So, as far as raising objections constructively, do these posts count?
Post #4 #8 #12 #23 #54 #58 #99 #109 #445 #494 #513
Those are the ones I found in two minutes of searching and copy/pasting links from a search of the first three pro-RF people I happened to remember offhand. There's plenty more in there, and by other people. Yes, we've engaged and almost without exception we've been polite and constructive. (I freely admit that my last post in the thread was not polite.)
I read through the first 6 or 8 pages and tried to engage productively three separate times, all to no avail. In all that time I did not see a single anti-RF person make what I would consider an honest argument. No one offered benefit of the doubt, no one really engaged with our points, there were numerous ad hominem attacks...shoot, their definition of rational fiction was tautological to start with and they refused to update when more constructive definitions were offered.
We can appear like a somewhat acerbic community at first, and we have a few boylishly mischievous members like Jemite, but honestly we're a pretty friendly bunch when you get to know us. _^
No. This is not "boyishly mischievous", this is rudeness and contempt. Here are some quotes to demonstrate what I'm talking about:
Jemnite, post #1 Okay, first before I start, I should probably define what 'rational fiction' is. It's that sort of odd fanfic trend where you see people go, "You know what this setting could do? SCIENCE. MOTHERFUCKING SCIENCE ALL OVER THE PLACE," except oftentimes it just means they cram if full of psuedoscience and strange philosophical arguments which have nothing to do with the scientific method at all?
[...]
"Rational fiction [...] hollows out the story and creates glaring faults and defects within it. It's popcorn fiction in the truest sense, it strokes the reader and author's ego for being so 'rational' and 'smart', so that they're too busy with gratification to see the major problems."
Jemnite, post #11 "And if you can say a story that says that is still 'rational fiction', I think you are blinded by your own self-conceits and cannot see past them in order to acknowledge that something you like might be bad."
Random832, post #13 "Another thing that rational fics suffer from is that the protagonist [...] is always a Mary Sue."
Reveen, post #18 "And frankly if you ask me, the better in terms of writing quality the work of fiction is, the less it will distinctly seem like rational fiction."
firefossil, post #24 "Rational fiction is inherently disrespectful of the original work." [...] "In short, rational fics are generally bad at fiction and bad at rationality."
firefossil, post #32 (In response to Kiba saying: " So I don't know why would anybody, rationalist or not, think like Vulcans.")
"Start with all rationalist fiction and all people who write it."
Guessmyname, post #52 "Being told I was in the same lofty halls as the aforementioned MoR author wasn't exactly the most en-heartening thing in the world, either. It just comes across as one of those bizarre internet personality cults that lives five miles up its own arse, desperately attaching itself to other things like a fungus to feel bigger and more important than it actually is."
This is just from the first couple of page, and there was a lot more that I could have included. This is not boyish mischief, this is something that we would be entirely within our rights to call a Rule 3 violation on.
u/traverseda [+6] With dread but cautious optimism (21 hours later)
That being said, there's a place for that. I wouldn't have them try to moderate the discussion. Sure, I may not like the local community norms, but I appreciate their adherence to free speech.
u/eaglejarl [+9] (22 hours later)
Free speech is a lovely thing in theory, but the point of it should be to have useful interactions. Shouting "I'm angry!" over and over is something you have the right to do, but it wastes your time and everyone else's.
u/Admiral_Skippeh [+1] (a day later)
Bit of a late reply here because I've been busy, apologies.
People in my community can be robust in debate, and like all communities there are a few who can occasionally tend to make it a bit too personal, but fundamentally I think our users turn out to be pretty friendly if you get them on a human level. There's also a phenomenon in these quotes of imagining what rationalists must be like without thinking they've ever spoken to one- I think this diminishes a tad later on. Don't feel critique of what are words at the end of the day is necessarily personal, and remember that our community has quite a diversity of opinion as well.
Thank you all for attempting to engage in the thread. Even when there was not as much mutual understanding as might be hoped, I think you broadened the discourse.
u/eaglejarl [+9] (a day later)
Just for the record, who are you talking about when you say "my community" -- do you mean all of SV, or just some small subgroup that hangs out on one particular subsection? It sounds like you don't consider the people from this subreddit to be in that group, yet we are very much part of SV. /u/Velorien and I write one of the most popular quests on the site and there are plenty of people from /r/rational participating in every part of SV. We were part of that discussion, we were part of the debate, yet we managed not to be "robust" (which appears to be another euphemism for "rude", much like "boyishly mischievous").
Seriously, you need to stop making excuses for these guys. Rude is rude, and what was on that thread was not okay.
EDIT: And the fact that, as I just noticed, one of the other mods locked the thread proves my point. Seriously, not okay. Stop making excuses.
u/Admiral_Skippeh [+5] (a day later)
I guess I meant more the sub-community I'm part of; it was not at all my intent to exclude you or any other /r/rational members from SV. SV is a pretty broad church, and includes a number of different tribes, often with relatively limited contact with one another. It's fantastic that you're a part of our community.
u/AugSphere [+2] Dark Lord of Corruption (a day later)
Just out of curiosity, what happened to that final post? Was there something nefarious at work? Double standards? Are not even the mods safe from intensification of oppression? The public wants to know!
EDIT: Huh, it's back again. Mysterious.
u/FeepingCreature [+2] GCV Literally The Entire Culture (a day later)
bit of a cheeky christmas delete war
clearly the mods are in high spirits
u/blazinghand [+9] Chaos Undivided (a day later)
I, Blazinghand, master defend of skub and the muscular broad back on whom rests the sanity of the thread, accept your thanks with much flexing. Perhaps i had more fun there than these guys cause I am a man of two worlds! an SVer and an r/rationaler both! yes, with one foot in the pond and the other foot forward, i can knock these arguments down like a full house of cards: bingo.
u/FeepingCreature [+1] GCV Literally The Entire Culture (17 hours later)
Escape ^ with \! ^_^
u/Anderkent [+8] (20 hours later)
Maybe he's lost an eye, you insensitive jerk.
u/Admiral_Skippeh [+2] (a day later)
Oh my word I don't know how I missed that lol
u/traverseda [+1] With dread but cautious optimism (21 hours later)
Thank you. I appreciate that.
u/callmebrotherg [+5] now posting as /u/callmesalticidae (2 days later)
I just checked out the thread again. There have been some pretty interesting points made.
I don't know when I'll be able to do it, but I'm pretty sure that I'm going to go through the thread, collect the good stuff that's been said, add it to some thoughts that people have expressed here and elsewhere in the past, and put it together for a sort of update on the rat!fic discourse as it currently stands.
Is there anyone else who would be interested in this?
u/blazinghand [+4] Chaos Undivided (2 days later)
I'm game. I'll probably also be taking part in the thread once it is unlocked.
u/eaglejarl [+1] (6 days later)
I'd be very interested to read it, although I'm afraid I lack the tuits and calmions to help assemble it. There definitely were some good points in there, buried under all the name-calling.
u/callmebrotherg [+2] now posting as /u/callmesalticidae (6 days later)
I'll put it on my list of projects.
u/want_to_want [+3] (10 hours later)
I think the complaint about character writing is very valid. The most charming characters in all rational fiction are in HPMOR, and they borrow a large part of their charm from canon. Can someone give examples of charming original characters in rational fiction?
The complaint about deconstructing settings instead of playing with them seems valid too. Even when describing very fantastic toys, rational fiction is usually goal-oriented rather than playful. Can you name a piece of rational fiction that's as playful with its toybox as the original Harry Potter?
u/MugaSofer [+11] (14 hours later)
The most charming characters in all rational fiction are in HPMOR, and they borrow a large part of their charm from canon. Can someone give examples of charming original characters in rational fiction?
Well, so much rational fiction is fanfic, there aren't very many original characters.
People seemed very fond of Pip from Significant Digits. And Garret from R!Animorphs. ETA: and a lot of people really, really liked Quirrelmort - who's basically an OC - to the point many outright refused to believe he could be a villain.
u/Anderkent [+3] (20 hours later)
Can someone give examples of charming original characters in rational fiction?
I liked the crew in babyeating aliens. It's a short piece so obviously the presentation isn't very in-depth, but they're not vulcans.
Can you name a piece of rational fiction that's as playful with its toybox as the original Harry Potter?
Explicitly rational fiction (i.e. self-identified rationalist)? I think the closest is Mother of Learning.
Non-self-identified... Omelas?(see below)
u/Evan_Th [+3] Sunshine Regiment (a day later)
Omelas? You're calling Omelas playful? What do you mean by "playful," then?
Those Who Walk Away From Omelas grabs one image, shoves it in our face, and wiggles it about a little to make sure we notice. To me, "playful" connotes whimsical use of many, or at least multiple, images and connotations. I don't know of any rationalfic that can come close to canon Harry Potter on that, but... for something in that direction, maybe Scott's "And I Show You How Deep the Rabbit Hole Goes"?
u/want_to_want [+2] (2 days later)
You're right, Scott's writing is a perfect example of something that's both rational and playful. I wish he put more effort into characters though. Unsong is pretty much a bunch of Valley archetypes and cardboard cutouts, except Dylan Alvarez who feels alive because he is an unrestrained inner part of Scott, like Tyler Durden.
u/Anderkent [+1] (a day later)
I guess I was going for "picks an idea and runs with it". You're right, doesn't fit very well. I guess I don't usually read anything I'd describe as 'playful', and I never recognized such a quality in the original Harry Potter.
(and on second thought Omelas isn't even very rational itself, exactly because it picks an idea and runs with it without focusing much on the likely consequences, so it was a bad example on both counts)
u/Cariyaga [+5] Kyubey did nothing wrong (20 hours later)
Kagome and Akane from Marked for Death. Bill from Origin of Species.
u/abstractwhiz [+4] Friendly Eldritch Abomination (a day later)
So I somehow stuck it out until page 14 before finally giving up, but here's a thing that puzzles me. Quite a few people in there were saying that they find rationalfic disrespectful to the original work.
I have this ongoing thing where I try to explicitly notice and dissect perspectives that completely surprise the hell out of me -- as in, "Wow, that idea wouldn't have occurred to me at all, and I still can't quite make sense of how anyone would come up with it". (Came up with this practice because I occasionally get social advice from socially adept family and friends, generally in response to some perceived faux pas on my part, and about 80% of the time I wind up with this flabbergasted feeling of "Why would someone even think of that?!")
This is one of those WTF ideas. I've seen it before from a bunch of friends who enjoy writing fanfic as well. How does this work? Is this some generalized dislike of all AU fics? Because as far as I can tell, if you think AU fics are okay, then this 'respect' business is just nonsense.
u/Anderkent [+3] (a day later)
Not necessarily. An AU fic might take a world build by someone else, and just add new things to it, rather than changing/correcting things.
So a fic that takes a world, and says 'this thing doesn't make sense, i'll make it better'... That's pretty disrespectful, yeah. (Though I don't really much care about fanfics being 'respectful' to the source; parodies are fun, fix fics are fun).
u/TacticusThrowaway [+1] (6 days later)
It's also an odd thing to say, considering how most of the RFic linked on the first page is original.
Almost as if they were operating on stereotypes.
u/Hollow_Soldier_Armor [+3] (16 hours later)
It is a shame he does not seem to care about honesty.
u/696e6372656469626c65 [+3] I think, therefore I am pretentious. (2 days later)
I don't know why I click these kinds of links any more; I really don't. I visited the linked thread and saw... pretty much exactly what I expected to see: vitriol, name-calling, strawmanning, one-sided discussion--in other words, stuff that's completely par for the course when dealing with anti-"X"ers. I mean, like, seriously: once you've seen one of these threads, you've seen them all.
There've been a lot of comments in this reddit post expressing confusion as to why the posters on SB/SV like doing this sort of thing so much, why their "criticism" is pretty much universally awful, etc. To me, the answer is quite simple: they don't like us. Some might call it tribal rivalry (though I think "rivalry" gives it a bit too much credit, as it implies that the dislike is mutual, which I don't find to be the case). EY calls it "sneer culture". You might call it something else--but we all know what it is I'm talking about: there's a group of people you don't like, so you insult them as much as you can, with each insult feeling deliciously cathartic, like getting to punch your sworn enemy, etc. etc. etc. ... and I really don't think there's anything more to it than that. You might protest at that, telling me to give other people the benefit of the doubt--and normally, I'd be all for that. But this, it seems to me, is a case that is ridiculously clear-cut: there are no doubts worth giving the benefit of.
So posting this sort of thing to /r/rational, in my opinion, accomplishes little. It creates some needless drama, provides little actionable advice, and is thoroughly unpleasant to read through--to say nothing of actually engaging with such "criticism". (Mad props to /u/DaystarEld, /u/eaglejarl, /u/blazinghand and /u/hackerkiba by the way; you are more patient people than I.) There might be thoughtful and useful criticism of the rational-sphere out there, but to find it, we need to look elsewhere--because this ain't it.
Aaand... I don't know what else to say. Mostly I'm just tired of having to go through this same damn song and dance every few months, or however long it actually takes before another SB/SV'er gets it into their head that creating another "I hate
Eliezer Yudkowskyrational fiction" would be a hilarious and original idea.Seriously. Can we stop doing this? Thanks.
u/eaglejarl [+2] (3 days later)
I think you're right about this being sneer culture, and that we all knew we weren't going to change the sneerers' minds. I (and at least some of the others) engaged so that uncommitted people reading the thread would see a rational counterpoint. (Pun intended.). So, yeah, it's aggravating, but there is some value.
u/LeonCross [+3] (3 days later)
Having just spent a few hours reading through the entire thread, I actually got something out of it.
After much concideration and analyzing what I like about "rational fiction," or rather what I most enjoy when I find it in a story and the rational fiction community tends to have a solid cross section of, is Hardened Fiction.
Thus, I shall be using Hardened Fiction to define my tastes in the future.
u/eaglejarl [+2] (6 days later)
That is a much better term. "Rationality", "rationalist", and "rational fiction" are all valid terms and I see why they were adopted, but they are terrible from a marketing standpoint. They are inherently divisive -- "if you don't agree that this is awesome then you are irrational!" Not the best rallying cry.
"Hardened fiction". Great choice.
u/LeonCross [+1] (8 days later)
Right? Hell, "Rationalism" isn't even why I read the stories. Just that they try to be more grounded and play everything straight. So Hardened Fiction is a closer term to what I enjoy anyways.
And yeah, that's a good point. "Yeah, I like rational fiction." "Oh, I see, so I just like irrational fiction?"
Instead it's like "I prefer hardened fantasy." "Oh, I like the more traditional fantasy myself."
u/somnolentSlumber [+5] (11 hours later)
I can't help but think that these critics are, like, being so incredibly and unnecessarily mean, for whatever reason. It's like a palpable sense of disgust radiating from their every post, especially the thread OP's. Which is somewhat ironic, given that trying to stay as unbiased as you can is a major tenet of rationalist fiction, and these critics are so inherently biased against rational and rationalist fiction that they actually ended up rationalizing their reasons for hating it.
Amazing.
u/blazinghand [+13] Chaos Undivided (15 hours later)
It's actually fitting, not ironic. Irony refers to things NOT being fitting, rather than things being fitting. Ironic would be if they were attacking rational fiction while being quite rational and doing everything rational fiction does, acting like the straw vulcans they decry.
u/Anderkent [+2] (20 hours later)
Vulcans aren't rational, let's not give their presumptions more firepower.
u/redrach [+2] (18 hours later)
It's funny how one of the stories that I've seen positively received here as an example of a rational fanfic is currently running on SV - With this Ring, and is fairly popular there.
I wonder if any of the critics in that thread are following it, but don't consider it a rational fic such since it's never been advertised by the author as such?
u/Geminii27 [+2] (22 hours later)
The problems mentioned aren't necessarily inherent in the genre. They might be ones which are slightly easier to fall into, but a good writer will be able to deftly avoid them just as with similar potholes in other genres.
u/not-an-automaton [+2] (2 days later)
Look, let's be clear; Jemnite is a troll whose sole purpose in life is to create controversial threads, stir up some shit, and watch the fireworks. They have a known habit of doing shit like this, and the only reason that they're not banned is that they manage to be sufficiently subtle about it. The rest of the anti-rational fic people in the thread though...
u/eaglejarl [+1] (7 days later)
Do you have any links to other examples that I could use? I'm currently talking about this thread with one of the mods. I can dig through his history myself but he's got thousands of messages. If you have examples to hand it would be helpful.
u/not-an-automaton [+1] (7 days later)
https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/search/2165099/ This https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/trigger-warnings-in-user-fiction.31400/ is the most blatant example.
u/eaglejarl [+1] (9 days later)
That...actually seems okay. He calls out one person by name which is not cool, but it seems to be for valid cause and not personally directed.
What am I missing?
u/not-an-automaton [+1] (13 days later)
He knew that saying that trigger warnings should be mandatory would trigger a lot of people. He then made a thread to do so.
u/eaglejarl [+1] (13 days later)
Ah. Makes sense. Thanks!
For the record: I got a 25-point infraction for a snotty departure post. I didn't try to convince the mod to reverse the infraction, but I did ask why there were no infractions for the OP and 15 pages of the anti-rational-fiction crowd being anywhere between condescending and flat-out insulting...especially since some of the people doing that were themselves mods. (I'm looking at you, foamy.) The answer was that mods are just people and are free to be as rude as they want as long as they don't mod a thread they're in. There was no clear answer on why the OP and/or the anti-RF crowd weren't being infracted.
u/CCpersonguy [+1] (a day later)
My strongest reaction is to the last line, "If you disagree, talk to this other guy" (paraphrasing). Well no, I don't want to talk to him, he didn't write this, you did.
u/not-an-automaton [+1] (2 days later)
So is My Father is Secretly a Killer Monkey-Man From Outer Space rationalfic?
u/not-an-automaton [+1] (2 days later)
u/blazinghand [+1] Chaos Undivided (2 days later)
Hmm, well, first I think I am going to start with the definition I laid out here. Going by this definition, would that be okay with you? It's probably best to nail this down first before going forward.
u/not-an-automaton [+1] (2 days later)
Maybe? It doesn't succeed on the category of 'things r/rational likes,' probably due to not being allowed to be posted here outside this discussion, but it fulfills the other categories, like that the characters not holding the idiot ball, and all being driven by their goals and values, rather than being caricatures. Even though their goals are 'become part of a god/a god,' 'create an army of saiyan warrior clones,' and 'find true love.'
u/blazinghand [+1] Chaos Undivided (2 days later)
Interesting ideas. Well, I'll take a look at it now and let you know what I think. While i'm taking a look, since you know the work better than me, could you play devil's advocate while I catch up and tell me what arguments a reasonable person might make against it?
also any longer description someone else wrote or ideas about why it's rational would totally be useful.
bbl while I read.
u/blazinghand [+1] Chaos Undivided (2 days later)
Update: Oh jeez, 50k words. I'm probably turning in tonight, but i'll read what I can then maybe find some time tomorrow to get up to speed with it.
u/not-an-automaton [+1] (2 days later)
I don't know what arguments a reasonable person would make against it. I couldn't think of any so I came here.
u/blazinghand [+2] Chaos Undivided (2 days later)
So, I read 1.5 chapters. Findings:
Fic is fun. I will probs reads the rest.
lots of weird plotholes about how the flying monkey who talks to people who see him crashland his aircraft, blows up bars, punches people through windows, drinks soy sauce, flies visibly and lands in public places, etc, is never considered to be an alien or z-fighter or whatever. He does insane terrifying things and people just completely fail to react.
The specific events where people fail to react are basically:
When he lands on the car park, the people see he is an alien. He flies off supernaturally (seemingly). There is no response to this.
He flies in public, right up to the restaurant, and walks in with his tail visible, then drinks a bottle of soy sauce. The response of the owner is "ah, he must be american" (hilarious, yes, but also the dude's an alien)
he blows up a couple of bars with his powers. It doesn't sound like he systematically eliminated nearby witnesses. In bar #3, he punches a dude through a window and out into the street, then gets another drink. no reaction from bar people, not even mentioned.
The next day, there seems to be no major changes to anything, nor any reactions from anyone, not even in real time, etc. This is still a great fic but requires significant suspension of disbelief during the first 2 chapters that the world is populated by actual thinking humans.
u/not-an-automaton [+2] (2 days later)
I concur. I had forgotten just how obvious Gerbanzo/Gendo had been before he started blending in in later chapters.
u/Nighzmarquls [+1] (2 days later)
I rather liked the logos, ethos, pathos discussion that happened for a little bit. Good writing advice, but no one seemed to sound board off of that with much of anything interesting.